A first-hand account of life in the Gaza Strip: Amid Israel-Hamas conflict, 5 Oscar-nominated films that highlight the futility of war

5 Broken Cameras

A still from Five Broken Cameras.

The best film about the conflict is also the most human. A feature-length documentary directed by the Palestinian Emad Burnat and the Israeli Guy Davidi, 5 Broken Cameras is a first-hand account of life in the Gaza Strip. It is told through the perspective of Bernat, a local villager who documents the struggles of his community amid Israeli incursions. The title refers to the five cameras that he uses over the years to capture his experience, after they keep getting destroyed because of a conflict that claims the lives of Bernat’s friends and family. The film was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar, making Bernat (who later collaborated with Davidi to create a narrative out of the footage from the five broken cameras) the first Palestinian to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Paradise Now

A still from Paradise Now.

Perhaps the most controversial film about the conflict, Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad’s psychological drama tells the story of two Palestinian suicide bombers during their last days together before they carry out a planned attack in Tel Aviv, Israel. Paradise Now takes viewers inside the minds of radicalised extremists, and was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Feature category at the Oscars. “The film is an artistic point of view of that political issue. The politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing,” Abu-Assad told the Guardian during the film’s awards run in America.

Munich

A still from Munich.

While Munich can be perceived as a mirror piece to Paradise Now, director Steven Spielberg’s epic drama about the Israeli revenge mission against a Palestinian militant organisation’s attack against its athletes is a genre exercise that spends most of its time justifying violence. Spielberg flips the white-knuckle narrative on its head by gazing inward and contemplating the futility of vengeance in the film’s final moments, but those who aren’t aligned with Munich’s politics can justifiably argue that this happens too late in the game.

The Gatekeepers

A still from The Gatekeepers.

A confessional of sorts featuring six former leaders of the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, director Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated documentary charts the origins of the organisation, and makes an effort to educate audiences about the culpability of the Israeli state in the acts of violence perpetrated against Palestinian communities. And it does this by putting those responsible at the front and centre. In an interview with the Times of Israel, Moreh was asked how making the movie changed him, and he said, “It made me more desperate, more bleak. I saw from their eyes how our leaders really don’t want to solve this problem. They do not have the audacity, the temerity, the will, the courage that we need from a leader

Waltz with Bashir

A still from Waltz with Bashir.

Director Ari Folman’s animated docudrama addresses the PTSD that those who’ve lived through this conflict are suffering from, as it revisits the 1982 Lebanon War and the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre through the eyes of the Israeli soldiers tasked with carrying out the atrocities. Like each of the four previous movies on this list, Waltz with Bashir examines the human cost of the conflict, and was also nominated at the Oscars.