10 documentaries every Arab should watch, #4: 5 Broken Cameras

CAIRO - 22 August 2017: When his fourth son was born in 2015, Emad Burnat, a Palestinian villager, got his first video camera. Excited by this new device, he started to record everything around him, be it important or not. And without planning, he gradually became a citizen journalist.

In his West Bank village, Bil'in, the Israeli occupation started to erect a separation wall, and the villagers started to resist this project. For more than five years, Emad films their stubborn resistance that was led by his friends and brothers. Preparations for the demonstrations, tear gas bombs, shootings, arrests, and night raids; all these details and more were documented in his film.



Throughout the documentary, we see his newborn growing and Emad starts to take him to join the demonstrations.

With one camera after the another being smashed during the violent clashes, the accidental filmmaker uses five different cameras; each tells a part of a real sad narrative.

Produced in 2011, ‘5 Broken Cameras’ was nominated for an Oscar, and won a number of awards at prestigious festivals, including International Emmy Awards, Durban International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, and Cinéma du Réel.