Region: Palestine
5 Broken Cameras
- Director: Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
- Release Date: 2011
- Production Country: France, Israel, Palestine
Given a video camera when his son is born, Burnat records his son's life as he grows up alongside the concrete barrier the Israeli government is constructing through the middle of their land. One day Burnat is filming the first steps of his child and the next catching the violent retaliation of the Israeli guards to the Palestinian villagers' non-violent protest to being separated from their ancestral lands.
Arn - Riket vid vägens slut (Arn: The Kingdom at Road's End)
- Director: Peter Flinth
- Release Date: 2008
- Production Country: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany
Returned home from the Crusades at long last, Arn marries and begins to build a home and a life with his new family. But when his friend King Knut dies, leaving a mere child as his heir, Arn must sally forth once again to defend his people and do his part for the eventual unification of Sweden.
Arn - Tempelriddaren (Arn: The Knight Templar)
- Director: Peter Flinth
- Release Date: 2007
- Production Country: Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany
Caught on the wrong side of a civil war and in bed with his fiancée, Arn is sentenced to twenty years' penance for his crimes. Trained by a Templar in the arts of war, Arn heads out to do battle in Palestine with his fellow knights, hoping to live long enough to return home.
Barabba (Barabbas)
- Director: Richard Fleischer
- Release Date: 1961
- Production Country: Italy
Freed in place of Jesus of Nazareth, Barabbas suffers from survivor's guilt even as he labors in sulfur mines and the gladiatorial games. Barabbas also survives earthquakes and other disasters, eventually gaining a reputation as the man who cannot die. However, when he falls in with Christians in Rome, he may find his luck coming to an end.
Ben-Hur
- Director: William Wyler
- Release Date: 1959
- Production Country: United States
Falling from wealthy merchant to galley slave, Judah Ben Hur returns to Jerusalem as the adopted son of the rich Roman whose life he saved and is intent on finding his family and punishing the childhood friend who unjustly imprisoned them—but his brief encounters with a strange carpenter from Nazareth may change everything.
Carlos
- Director: Olivier Assayas
- Release Date: 2010
- Production Country: France, Germany
Venezuelan Illich Sanchez learned communism from his father and was later educated in England and Moscow, but finds his true purpose in life when he is recruited into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, becoming a widely feared and wanted terrorist.
El Naser Salah el Dine (Saladin and the Great Crusades)
- Director: Youssef Chahine
- Release Date: 1963
- Production Country: Egypt
Saladin retaliates against European knights when they sack a caravan of Muslim pilgrims and successfully wrests the Holy Land from their rule.
Exodus
- Director: Otto Preminger
- Release Date: 1960
- Production Country: United States
After decades of work and hope, a Jewish state appears to be on the way to becoming a reality. But hope for a peaceful birth for the nation is quickly lost in a rising tide of sectarian violence between militants Jews and Arabs. All the while, thousands of Holocaust survivors, desperate to create a home of their own away from the terrors of World War II Europe, are placing even greater pressure on statesmen and militants alike.
Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew)
- Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Release Date: 1964
- Production Country: Italy, France
Jesus teaches in parables, threatens revolt, and dies a terrible death only to live again.
Jesus Christ Superstar
- Director: Norman Jewison
- Release Date: 1973
- Production Country: United States
Judas Iscariot tries to decide whether he should support Jesus or betray him.
Jesus of Nazareth
- Director: Franco Zeffirelli
- Release Date: 1977
- Production Country: Italy, United Kingdom
In Palestine, a young boy matures into a holy man with a mystical presence and a polarizing message that threatens to upset the careful balance maintained by the Roman state government and local religious leaders. But when ordinary people continue to flock to his side, both ruling groups must determine whether creating a martyr by condemning Jesus to death is less dangerous than allowing this holy man to continue to spread his radical ideas of equality, love, and forgiveness.
Joseph
- Director: Roger Young
- Release Date: 1995
- Production Country: Italy, United States, Germany
Young Joseph, eldest son of his father's favorite wife, is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, yet when Joseph arrives in Egypt, he finds himself working in the Pharaoh's palace, where his penchant for analyzing dreams allows him to become the most powerful slave in the land—which comes in handy when his brothers arrive years later, begging for shelter and food.
Kedma
- Director: Amos Gitai
- Release Date: 2002
- Production Country: Italy, Israel, France
Fleeing on the battered freighter Kedma, a group of weary Jewish concentration camp survivors come ashore in Palestine, only to find themselves under attack from their former allies, the British Army. Rescued by Jewish guerrillas, the group discovers that their hoped-for "new order" is instead embroiled in a bitter fight for its existence—and they must remove and destroy another people to establish their own promised land.
Lorsque le monde parlait arabe (When the World Spoke Arabic: The Golden Age of Arab Civilization)
- Director: Philippe Calderon
- Release Date: 1999
- Production Country: France
While Europe was mired in feudalism, mud, and ignorance, the Arabic world was the center of learning, science, art, and tolerance.
Monty Python's Life of Brian
- Director: Terry Jones
- Release Date: 1979
- Production Country: United Kingdom
In a land filled with Holy Men competing for followers, hapless Brian finds himself to be mistaken for the Messiah next door.
Paradise Now
- Director: Hany Abu-Assad
- Release Date: 2005
- Production Country: Palestinian, France, Germany, Netherlands, Israel
Recruited for a suicide bombing attack, two young Palestinian men find their plans thwarted when they are separated at the border. One man returns home while the other makes his way through Tel Aviv, determined to see his mission through; yet as each man has time to rethink his decision, will they (or could they) make a different choice and not set off their bombs?
Soldier of God
- Director: David Hogan
- Release Date: 2005
- Production Country: United States
Disillusioned by the greed of his fellow knights, a Templar flees a disastrous battle only to become lost in the wilderness. Rescued by a Muslim pilgrim, the Templar finds refuge in an isolated oasis, where he gradually realizes that his greatest enemies may not be the Muslims he came to fight, but the prejudices and beliefs of his own people.
The Bible: In the Beginning
- Director: John Huston
- Release Date: 1966
- Production Country: United States, Italy
Adam and Eve enjoy a blissful life in the Garden of Eden, but when they eat from the wrong tree, God casts them out into the real world. As their descendants spread throughout Western Asia, indulging in everything from agriculture to hedonism, God continues to keep an eye on them, rewarding the few most righteous with prosperity and progeny, while raining fire, floods, and other natural disasters down upon the unrighteous.
The Crusades
- Director: Cecil B. DeMille
- Release Date: 1935
- Production Country: United States
King Richard would rather fight infidels than marry a French Queen, so he heads off to the Crusades, but he ends up marrying Berengaria along the way (since she has food and his men have none), only to have her fall into Saladin's hands. When they all meet at the walls of Jerusalem everything ends happily, in spite of the whole "war to defeat the infidels" aspect of Richard's original campaign.
The Last Days of Pompeii
- Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack
- Release Date: 1935
- Production Country: United States
When his adopted son is healed by a strange carpenter, Marcus is grateful—but not so grateful he is going to help rescue the man from crucifixion, no matter how unjust the sentence. Years later, Marcus's own son is unjustly condemned to death in the arena, but Mount Vesuvius erupts too late to provide enough of a distraction to save him, although Marcus can still help save other people's sons, if he is willing to try.