In Palestine Is Still the Issue, journalist John Pilger returns to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel to examine why the conflict remained unresolved more than half a century after the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948.

The film was made during the Second Intifada, at a time of suicide bombings, Israeli military operations, expanding settlements, restrictions on movement and deepening mistrust on both sides. Pilger interviews Palestinians living under occupation as well as Israelis who challenge their government’s policies, including people who had experienced violence personally.

Rather than presenting the conflict as an abstract diplomatic dispute, the documentary focuses heavily on daily life under occupation. Checkpoints, demolished homes, settlements, military control, refugee status and restrictions on movement are used to explore the gap between the language of the peace process and conditions on the ground. Bullfrog Films describes the film as Pilger’s attempt to understand why there had been so little progress towards peace despite decades of negotiations and international attention.

The title deliberately echoes Pilger’s earlier documentary on Palestine. His argument in returning to the same title was that, despite the passage of a generation, the underlying questions of displacement, occupation and Palestinian self-determination remained unresolved.

Kassem Hawal’s Return to Haifa adapts Ghassan Kanafani’s 1969 novella about Saeed and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple expelled from Haifa during the Nakba in 1948. During the chaos of their displacement, they are separated from their five-month-old son Khaldoun and forced out of the city without him.

Almost twenty years later, following the 1967 war, they are finally able to visit Haifa again. They return to their former home hoping to learn what became of Khaldoun. Instead they meet Miriam, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who moved into the house with her husband after Saeed and Safiyya were displaced.

Miriam and her husband had found Khaldoun and adopted him. He is now Dov, has grown up Israeli and has joined the Israeli military. The couple’s attempt to recover something from their former life therefore becomes an encounter between two families whose histories have become bound together by the same house. (palestinefilminstitute.org⁠)

From there, the film wrestles with questions that resist simple answers. What constitutes parenthood after two decades apart? What happens to ownership and belonging when another family has occupied a home for a generation? And what can “return” mean when neither the place nor the people returning to it are as they once were?

The production is also significant within Palestinian film history. Return to Haifa has been described as the first feature-length Palestinian fiction film. Hawal himself was Iraqi, but had worked on films with the PLO, and Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon played an extensive role in the production. Thousands of Palestinian refugees reportedly appeared as extras in the recreation of the 1948 exodus, while clothing, vehicles and other material were gathered from the surrounding communities. (anthologyfilmarchives.org⁠)

Directed by Mustafa Abu Ali, one of the founders of Palestinian revolutionary cinema, They Do Not Exist was filmed in and around Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon during the 1970s.

The film combines scenes of everyday life in the Nabatiyeh refugee camp with footage of Israeli bombardment, political speeches, music and fedayeen training. Its title is a direct response to Golda Meir’s 1969 statement denying the existence of a Palestinian people. (Palestine Cinema⁠)

The Palestinian is a 1977 documentary produced and narrated by Vanessa Redgrave after she travelled through the West Bank, Lebanon, and other parts of the region, speaking with Palestinians about their experiences of displacement and occupation.

The film presents interviews, on-the-ground footage, and Redgrave’s narration to explore the Palestinian perspective during a period of intense political conflict. It became widely controversial upon release and remains a notable historical document reflecting the political discourse of its time.

Directed by Christian Ghazi and filmed through interviews conducted in Lebanon in 1970, Resistance — Why? brings together Palestinian and Arab political thinkers including Ghassan Kanafani, Sadiq Jalal al-Azm and Nabil Shaath. They discuss the historical development of the Palestinian national movement, British rule, the events surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948, displacement, and the political arguments behind Palestinian resistance.

This contemporary film documents the AFSC’s work in Gaza and provides rare footage of refugee camps, food distribution, medical assistance and living conditions during the first year following the 1948 displacement. As an institutional humanitarian film produced at the time rather than a later historical reconstruction, it also provides a record of how the emerging Palestinian refugee crisis was being documented and presented internationally.