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In March of this year, two documentaries examining the consequences of the 7 October 2023 attacks reached theaters within days of each other. The first, titled October 8, centered on the “emergence of antisemitism on college campuses, on online platforms and on the streets” after Hamas forces took the lives of over 1,200 individuals in southern Israel, the majority being non-combatants. This documentary, produced by a prominent celebrity, was broadly distributed by an maverick film company that has also managed a Trump biopic and a Jamal Khashoggi documentary. Promotion for the film occurred on popular TV shows, and it eventually earned more than $1.3m in the United States, a significant sum for a political documentary.

Meanwhile, the second documentary, “The Encampments”, faced a tougher road. A documentary on campus protests against the retaliatory actions in of Gaza, focusing in part on activist a key figure – who was later detained by federal authorities for his advocacy – received no support from famous TV hosts. Its specialty release at a NYC cinema led to intimidation attempts, an act of property damage in the cinema entrance and social media censorship. That it was able to premiere – and made $80,000 in its opening weekend, a notable achievement for the specialty box office – is due to a new distribution company, an upstart, Palestinian American-led film funding and release firm founded by siblings Hamza and Badie Ali to support movies presenting Palestinian views reach audiences they typically cannot, in a market that has historically overlooked or marginalized such stories.

Is a ‘chilling effect’ preventing Hollywood from tackling controversial documentaries?

These two films demonstrate the different landscapes for Israeli and Palestinian narratives in the United States – one concentrated and often backed by more mainstream institutions, the other fractured and more ad hoc, yet expanding. The two-year anniversary of the October 7th events highlights this disparity even more – this weekend marks the selective premiere of “The Road Between Us”, a documentary tracking a former Israeli military leader’s mission to rescue his family members from militants on October 7th. A gripping Taken-like tale of survival, trauma and mourning that omits Israel’s subsequent killing of at least 66,000 Palestinians in response, The Road Between Us received support from celebrities and won the People’s Choice Award for best documentary at a prestigious cinema event. American release rights were rapidly acquired by a media company.

It is challenging to get any controversial, politically charged movie financed, much less distributed in the United States, especially under the current political climate. But films featuring Palestinian perspectives, or films questioning the dominant story of a government that has used the tragedies of 7 October into a tool for conflict justifying an internationally recognized genocide in Gaza, have found it especially challenging, sometimes impossible, to connect with viewers. “I’ve never made a film about Palestine that’s ever been distributed,” said one director, the director of Coexistence, My Ass!, a film about an comedian from Israel confronting her upbringing as “the symbolic figure for the peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians” in the wake of the widespread devastation of Gaza.

With an acclaimed festival run, the filmmaker, who is of Lebanese and Canadian descent, had hopes for a release agreement for their documentary. “We believed that there could be a possibility that Coexistence could break through just based on the subject’s distinct outlook – it’s such a novel approach of looking at the issue,” the creator said. But agreements fell through; the team ultimately opted for a independent distribution plan beginning soon, handled by the identical firm that arranged a previous documentary’s self-distribution earlier this year. The other movie, a powerful non-fiction work by an Israeli-Palestinian collective about long-standing struggles to resist occupation in a Palestinian village, won a bittersweet Oscar for best documentary; weeks later, local settlers violently attacked a co-director, who was then arrested by military personnel reportedly ridiculing the prize. It remains unavailable for online viewing in the United States but earned over $2.5 million at the US box office (making it the highest grossing of the Oscar-nominated documentaries this year).

‘We must act’: The firm distributing Palestinian films others avoid

Another film, All That’s Left of You, a grand narrative on three generations of a family from Palestine forced from their home in 1948, also looked for a distributor after a strong festival run, but ran into concern from distributors over the “content theme”. “We had high hopes that one mainstream distributor would agree to release it,” said the American-Palestinian filmmaker. A discussion with an undisclosed firm concluded, according to the director, with a pass, citing too many films. “That is precisely what they said to another Palestinian movie that debuted recently at a film festival. It seems like fear of controversy,” she said.

The reality, according to Watermelon co-founder, is that “there are not a lot of distributors that are going to back Palestinian cinema”. Large streaming platforms have steered clear. But one studio recently acquired the international streaming rights to a series called “Red Alert”, a scripted mini-series partly produced by an Israeli production fund, which depicts the 7 October Hamas attacks on the country that, per the logline, “transformed southern Israel into a conflict area, testing humanity and creating heroes through turmoil”. The studio CEO touted the series as proof of the company’s “continued commitment to storytelling through creative quality and factual precision”. And another platform acquired the American rights for “One Day in October”, a dramatized show based on first-hand accounts of the incident that will debut on its second anniversary.

At the same time, “I don’t think a solitary Palestinian movie has ever gotten mainstream distribution in the United States”, said the filmmaker, who has since formed her own distribution company, Visibility Films, in response to the roadblocks. “Nobody has truly been prepared to take a risk on demonstrating that these movies can attract broad audiences.”

“It’s unfortunate that we have not received that same support,” said the founder. “None of our movies has been picked up by a mainstream streamer.” Still, “the industry is definitely shifting”, he said, pointing to the recent pledge signed by over 3,900 influential industry personalities to avoid collaboration with Israeli cinema organizations “implicated in genocide and apartheid” against Palestinians, adding: “However, it appears, sadly, like the streaming platforms are not joining this movement.” (A number of famous individuals were among those who signed a rebuke labeling the commitment a “source of falsehoods”; several cited Israel’s Oscar submission of a film titled “The Sea”, a movie concerning a Palestinian boy who tries to visit the seaside for the first occasion but is denied entry at a security post. Interestingly, the national film awards is under threat of funding cuts after The Sea received the highest honor.)

A new wave of Palestinian-led, challenging films is finally beginning to crest even without significant corporate support – the distribution company signed on to distribute All That’s Left of You, the official entry from Jordan to the Oscars, which will start its selective cinema run in January; prominent actors came on board as producers. The company also represents the Palestinian entry for the Oscars, generational epic Palestine 36, and is a producer on The Voice of Hind Rajab, which received critical acclaim and a significant prize at the Venice Film Festival; that film, which reconstructs the killing of a young child in the region with her real voice, will be distributed in Europe by a sales company, and has {yet to find|not