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International support for Palestinian rights is growing, even in Hollywood, where numerous of film workers have signed a pledge to boycott Israel’s film groups considered complicit in the war in the Gaza Strip, and well-known stars are backing movies that center the Palestinian experience.

Yet, Palestinian-produced films still struggle to obtain distribution and achieve visibility – despite a major Academy Awards win last year. To highlight the Palestinian vibrant heritage of cinema, we asked leading Palestinian directors and entertainers to share their top Palestinian movies.

‘By the End, I Was Moved to Tears’: Mo Amer on All That’s Left Of You

Cherien Dabis’s film All That’s Left of You, which debuted this year at the Sundance Film Festival, is a rare film, bold and unforgettable. By portraying the narrative of a one Palestinian clan, from its origins in pre-1948 Jaffa through generations of exile, it does not just recount a story – it celebrates a heritage.

The visuals are rich and immersive. Each scene feels purposeful, each image a recollection – the citrus orchards of Jaffa, the roads of Nablus, the alienation of displacement. The performances are powerful, showcasing the director’s extraordinary versatility alongside multiple generations of the Bakris – the family of actors most associated with Palestinian cinema. They are complex, restrained and heartbreakingly real.

What’s most impressive is how seamlessly the movie shifts between time periods without ever breaking its narrative thread. Each decade of the Palestinian story is brought to life with remarkable detail, both visually and in feeling. The direction is skillful in that way, leading you through years with precision and care.

In the final moments, I was brought to tears. All That’s Left of You isn’t just about the history, it’s about the unseen ways it influences who we are. It’s a movie that lingers – not because of spectacle, but because of truth.

• Mo Amer is a Palestinian-American performer and comic and the creator of a well-known Netflix series.

‘The Most Wildly Original Palestinian Film Ever Made’: Cherien Dabis on Divine Intervention

A sunglasses-clad Palestinian female defiantly walks through a checkpoint. Israel’s troops watch, guns pointed, baffled. Her beauty disarms them and causes the watchtower crashing down. It’s an iconic moment from Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention that has stayed with me ever since I first saw the movie. I was a second-year graduate cinema student at a university when it opened in the United States in 2003. I remember being stunned by its power, its resistance, and its pure boldness.

At a time when the majority of Palestinian cinema tended to be the serious or tragic, Suleiman created a new path. Through satire, straight-faced acting, and near-silent observation, he captured the surreal absurdity of life under military control. Playing the movie’s mute protagonist personally, he centered his own perspective at the heart of the story. That choice felt revolutionary. His performance was calm and restrained, which only heightened the tension all around him.

Divine Intervention is both deeply personal and highly political. Its visual language is universal, yet grounded in the divided existence of Palestinian identity. The filmmaker turns separation, displacement and defiance into something approaching poetry. The outcome is poignant, dreamlike, at times hilarious and always painfully truthful.

There existed nothing similar to it in Palestinian film at the time. There still isn’t. It continues to be, for me, the most wildly original and imaginative Palestinian film ever created.

• Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian-American filmmaker, writer, producer and actress, whose latest movie is an official entry for the Oscars.

‘Palestine Has Gained a Talent’: Hany Abu Assad on To a Land Unknown

For me, a great movie needs to do two things. It needs to provide an journey that’s new, feeling and smart. It needs to give me something I’ve been missing – a perspective that contradicts my belief system, a method to consider issues outside my own world, a view to a different era and location. In short, I need to feel enlightened, emotionally and in mind.

Second, it needs to impress me with its skill. A talent that is not busy trying to impress but is used to open my eyes to something deeper.

The movie To a Land Unknown, which was launched recently, is precisely this type of film. Made by Mahdi Fleifel, it is a story about two Palestinian friends searching for improved futures as refugees in Greece.

To a Land Unknown allowed me to experience what it’s like to be a at-risk migrant, in a strange land, where everything works in opposition to your efforts to leave the ghetto. It showed me that in certain situations, although conditions outside your control conspire against you, you yourself can nonetheless become your own biggest obstacle. And its interplay between content and visual form floored me in its craft.

In To a Land Unknown, Palestine has found a talent that will serve its mission without shedding a single drop of violence.

• Hany Abu-Assad is a Palestinian Dutch filmmaker, writer and two-time Oscar contender for his acclaimed films.

‘Even Livestock Are Seen as a Danger’: Basel Adra on The Wanted 18

Among my most loved Palestinian films is The Wanted 18. It recounts the story of Palestinians in the village of Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem in the West Bank, during the initial uprising of the 1980s. It documents their effort to {