Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African American Heritage Month 2022: Videos and Film

The Lebanese Civil War saw 170,000 dead, 1 million displaced and 17,000 people still missing. During the conflict thousands of teenagers picked up arms to fight in a 15 years war that tore the nation apart. Moving through the testimonies of Assad, a right wing Christian intelligence officer; Ahed, a Palestinian refugee fighter and Nassim, a Communist commander, About a War unpicks the personal motivations, trauma and regret of militiamen who picked up arms during the civil war.

Music is more than just a sequence of sounds reaching our being. It can bring back memories, call up fantasies, dreams, feelings, and emotions. Music can destroy borders and connect us. Palestine has been under occupation since 1948, which impacts lives every day. Freedom is limited, because of restrictions within society and imposed identities by Israel.

Only days after the 2017 Trump inauguration, furious Americans gathered at airports across the country in protest of the Muslim ban. But it was the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union, waging the fight in federal court, that turned the tide. Access to the ACLU offices has finally been granted to the award-winning filmmaking team, as they follow four seismically important cases and a handful of magnetic attorneys who managed to persuade Supreme Court Justices, beating back serious encroachments upon our freedoms.

When America and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, most people expected an easy victory. Two very different witnesses question the benefits of the war in Iraq.

In the war-torn city of Kabul, a class of young girls from disadvantaged neighborhoods learns to read, write--and skateboard.

She lived in Cairo, Paris and New York, but died in an old age home in Givatayim. She was admired and beautiful, but only few knew her during her life and even less after she had passed away. She was the first to write of Levantine and Mizrachi identities, as no one before her had done.

23 year old, Nadia Murad, a once ordinary girl, is a survivor of the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq who was able to escape sexual slavery at the hands of ISIS, has become a relentless beacon of hope for her people. On Her Shoulders follows this strong-willed young woman as she fights to bring ISIS to justice and save her people from extinction.

Samaritans are a unique minority in the Middle East. The world’s only holders of Israeli-Palestinian dual nationality, with only 780 members left, they are now on the verge of extinction. In the West Bank, on the heights of Nablus, Abdallah Cohen, the high priest's grandson, seeks his own way.

The Viewing Booth explores a space ostensibly off-limits to cinema — the internal experience of a viewer. In a lab-like location, Maia Levy, a young Jewish American woman, watches videos portraying life in the occupied West Bank, while verbalizing her thoughts and feelings. Maia is an enthusiastic supporter of Israel and the images, depicting Palestinian life under Israeli military rule, contradict some of her deep-seated beliefs.