Best Israeli documentary movies

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.

When, in the late 1990s, Israeli student Teddy Katz exposed the massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the village of Tantura, in May 1948, during the first Arab-Israeli war, he was initially praised for his pioneering work; but he was soon infamous and branded a traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges that corroborates Teddy's findings.

Yael Hersonski's powerful documentary achieves a remarkable feat through its penetrating look at another film-the now-infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, showing the manipulations of camera crews in these "everyday" scenes. Well-heeled Jews attending elegant dinners and theatricals (while callously stepping over the dead bodies of compatriots) now appeared as unwilling, but complicit, actors, alternately fearful and in denial of their looming fate.

Set in the cloak-and-dagger world of the IDF’s undercover special forces - the Mista'arvim - Fauda is an Israeli-produced TV drama which has garnered praise for its realistic depiction of military tactics alongside its empathetic portrayal of Palestinians, militant or otherwise. BBC Arabic joins the production of the hotly anticipated second season, and tries to understand how it might one day pave the way for a dialogue between the two sides built on mutual understanding and compassion.

The flat on the third floor of a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv was where my grandparents lived since they immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Were it not for the view from the windows, one might have thought that the flat was in Berlin. When my grandmother passed away at the age of 98 we were called to the flat to clear out what was left. Objects, pictures, letters and documents awaited us, revealing traces of a troubled and unknown past. The film begins with the emptying out of a flat and develops into a riveting adventure, involving unexpected national interests, a friendship that crosses enemy lines, and deeply repressed family emotions. And even reveals some secrets that should have probably remained untold...

How US politicians and diplomats, over the past 25 years, have come close to achieving something almost impossible: securing peace between the State of Israel and its Arab and like-minded neighbors, mired in a struggle both dialectical and violent since the early 20th century, due to historical and religious reasons, entrenched offenses and prejudices, and the invisible and tyrannical hand of third countries' geopolitical interests in the area.

Documentary of three gay men living in the Palestine-Israel region trade reflections on their situation and that of the region they live.

At the elite level, bridge - the world's most popular card game - has become a million-dollar cut-throat business. When the best competitive player is accused of cheating, the ensuing scandal confounds experts, criminal science, celebrities and basic belief in this hilarious true-crime thriller.

An estimated 400,000 people were tattooed with serial numbers at Auschwitz, of whom only a few thousand survive today. This intimate and visually rapturous documentary details the current lives of some of these survivors, their memories of the camps, and their relationships with the numbers. Numbered is an emotionally affecting portrait of memory and history, and their enduring presence in individual lives.

The story of Ohad Naharin, renowned choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, an artistic genius who redefined the language of modern dance.

A exploration of the fanaticism that surrounds the Apple brand, featuring interviews with Mac evangelists and members of the Mac community.

This documentary consists solely of footage taken by people who were at the Nova Music Festival when the massacre started on October 7th.

A portrait of various gay Orthodox Jews who struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexual orientation.

The film tells the story of the Chernobyl accident through a mosaic of unique personal testimonies of its participants. The experiences of the difficult past and the sad results of the present recreate the full picture of the accident 30 years later.

Twenty years before the spectacle of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu already understood the political benefits of a toxic relationship with the media, and direct communication with the public. King Bibi explores Netanyahu's rise to power, relying solely on archival footage of his media performances over the years: from his days as a popular guest expert on American TV, through his public confession of adultery, and his mastery of the art of social media. From one studio to another, "Bibi" evolved from Israel's great political hope, to a controversial figure whom some perceive as Israel's savior, and others - as a cynical politician who will stop at nothing to retain his power.

Four ultra-orthodox women who dared to yell “we won’t be silenced!”.Through their revolution, we manage to make our way inside a closed off community with a very clear code of silence in regards to sexuality in general, and sexual assault in particular. Following these events, the worlds of each of these women has been overturned, whether because she herself has been a victim of sexual assault or a woman in one of their close circles.

"Haturnir" is a documentary film, following Liam Ronen "The CEO" - a high school student who arranged the soccer tournament that eventually succeeded in becoming an outrageous empire. The film captures the fights, conflicts, COVID-19 influences, and competitions in this event.

Sudent film by Folman where he documents his close friends taking cover on the verge of anxiety attacks during the first Gulf war while Iraqi missiles lands all over Tel Aviv.

The unbelievable story of Leonid Bernshtein, a young Jewish soldier who rose to become the leader and led the operation to destroy the secret facility of the notorious Nazi V2 ballistic missiles.

Joza's humble appearance does not reveal his wild past. Now a tour guide in Jerusalem, he was once Israel's biggest cocaine dealer: he's been constantly reinventing himself while making all the possible mistakes along the way.

No one knows his real name; he is only known as Mr. Shoshani. He was an eternal nomad, a mad genius, who attracted disciples such as Nobel Prize winner Eli Weisel and renowned philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Mr. Shoshani is one of the unsolved riddles of the 20th century, he is among the 10 most mysterious people of all time.

This film provides a retrospective of 24 hours at the Nova festival in Re'im through the lens of young individuals who endured the horror.

"On The Map" tells the story of '77 team, the one that brought the first European Cup to Israel and became "The Team of the Nation" Still demoralized after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was hungry for a collective uplifting event. "On The Map", a fast-moving, emotional and awe-inspiring documentary, recounts the story of how one Tel Aviv team no one thought could win toppled the four-time defending European Champions and put Israel firmly on the map. Featuring interviews with the Jewish American athletes who made history, "On the Map" combines the pulsepounding action of a high-stakes game with an incendiary political situation at the height of the Cold War to deliver a film that honors Israeli heroes, mesmerizes fans of the game and captures the spirit of a nation triumphant and victorious against all odds.

Shortly before her passing, Golda Meir was interviewed for Israeli television. After shooting ended, the cameras kept rolling, recording an intimate talk with the first and only woman to ever rule Israel. As she lit one cigarette after the other, Golda spoke freely, pleading her case for her term as Prime Minister – five turbulent years that secured her place in history, albeit at a high personal cost. Based on these never-before seen materials, testimonies of supporters and opponents and rare archival footage, GOLDA tells the story of Meir’s dramatic premiership – from her surprising rise to power and iconic international stature as “queen of the Jewish people”, to her tragic and lonely demise.

Can justice truly be served in the occupied territories given the current system of law administered by Israel for Palestinians? This documentary explores the history of Israel's military legal system in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In 1985, there were three gays who were out of the closet in Israel. By 1998, there were 3,000. In this short, intensive and dramatic period, Israel came out of the closet in one of the quickest and most colourful revolutions of the end of the 20th century.

At the age of 28, I was drafted as a soldier in the Second Lebanese War. Instinctively, I grabbed my video camera. The movie recalls the lack of justice in this unnecessary war and the loss of valuable lives. This was my personal earthquake and the nation as a whole. (Yariv mozer)

Ten years ago, David Cunio starred in Tom Shoval’s debut feature film Youth, which revolved around a kidnapping. On October 7, 2023, Cunio was taken from the Nir Oz kibbutz and has been held hostage in Gaza ever since. Now, Shoval sends him a cinematic letter.

A story of love, loss and redemption set on a train in 1943.

The story of the starvation camp Pechora on the border between Transnistria and the German occupied Vinnytsia district in the Ukraine. A "model" camp that illustrates the murderous policy of the Romanians towards the Jews: death by starvation and disease.

Over the span of fifty years, the Israeli military censorship secretly copied soldiers' personal letters, extracting their views on the most contentious issues facing Israeli society. The findings were presented to leaders in a top-secret report identified as "The Soldier's Opinion."

Israel is the only country in the world where 18-year-old girls are drafted for compulsory military service. The frank testimonials of six female Israeli soldiers stationed in Gaza and the West Bank sees the young women revisit their tours of duty in the occupied territories, and share shocking moments of negligence, flippancy, immaturity and power-tripping.

A Jewish detective story in the Alps revolving around the former President of the Jewish Community in Tyrol, Ernst Beschinsky. A man with this name dies twice – once in 1969, in Israel, and a second time in 1987, in Innsbruck. This goes unnoticed, at first. In 2010, when a relative in London leaves a house as inheritance, the question arises both in Israel and in Innsbruck: Who was Ernst Beschinsky really? A true story, told by numerous forged documents and many authentic reports.

An intimate investigation of World War II soviet veteran, 92-year-old Newsak Weis or as he prefers, just Uncle Nusya. The mission is to discover a real person under the armor of medals and the role model of a hero.

The Zionist Story, an independent film by Ronen Berelovich, is the story of ethnic cleansing, colonialism and apartheid to produce a demographically Jewish State. Ronen successfully combines archival footage with commentary from himself and others such as Ilan Pappe, Terry Boullata, Alan Hart and Jeff Halper.

From the very first day of Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014, filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly has been there with his camera. He follows a team of paramedics in an ambulance, eventually becoming a core member who bears witness to their perilous and heartbreaking rescue work. Ambulance tracks the harrowing chaos amidst a state-run military operation on civilians.

A look into the lives of teenage male prostitutes working the area known as the "Electricity Garden" in Tel Aviv.

Itzhak Rabin's murder ended all efforts of peace, and with him the whole left wing of Israel died. The movie shows the last of his days as prime minister, and what led to his murder.

Kochava Levi, a 31-year-old housewife of Yemeni descent, was taken hostage during an attack on the Savoy hotel in Tel Aviv (March 1975). Over the course of one night, she transformed herself into a fearless heroine. However, by dawn, she was left with nothing but shame.

When Irmy, a soon-to-be-dad comedian goes to his own father asking for money, he finds out that his only inheritance is a tiny piece of land in the occupied Palestinian territories. To make things worse, he also finds out that extreme-right-winged Jewish settlers have settled in his land and made a winery out of it. Together with his father, Irmy wages war on the settlers, army, and Israeli government and demands his land back! What begins as a personal quest to recover this contested piece of real estate quickly evolves into a humorous activist adventure that exposes the mechanisms of the occupation.

A man brings objects to life in a struggle to recreate the lost memory of his mother’s last day.

Orthodox teacher and wigmaker, Ruchama and Tikva, embark on a journey to fulfill their dream of making movies within the closed society in which they live. Ruchama is writing and producing her first film while Tikva prepares for her first acting role. Like other orthodox women who in recent years have started making films for strictly female audiences, they feel a strong need to express themselves despite strict rabbinical censorship. The Dreamers delicately sketches the portrait of women trying to break new ground as artists in a patriarchal world. Will they find freedom in their art.

Thousands of PTSD victims live in Israel, which in recent years has been promoting an innovative treatment, namely psycho-active substances, known as psychedelic drugs. The film documents PTSD victims undergoing MDMA treatment at Beer Yaacov psychiatric hospital over several years. We return with them to the site of the trauma, to the life before and the long and complex road to leaving the bleeding wounds behind and returning to life.

A fascinating journey through the life of Israeli artist Dani Karavan, an irreverent and charismatic creator, recognized worldwide for radically transforming public space with his monumental environmental installations.

Can a leader succeed in influencing the world? Or is he, as any other human being, only a nutshell tossed to the waves of history with no ability to affect it? Tolstoy pondered this question in War and Peace. Ehud Barak, controversial former prime minister and a decorated commander on the battlefield, contemplates it in this film. Twenty years after he was forced to resign from the premiership due to the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit, 78-year-old Barak observes his own history and the history of the State of Israel with disillusioned clarity, while trying to figure it all out - "What if?"

In 2007, the human rights organisation B’tselem launched a project consisting of providing video cameras and training to Palestinian volunteers in the West Bank to document their lives under Israeli occupation. Made up of many short films, Of Land and Bread is a film of painful eloquence.

Omri reunites his family for a drive to the desert. Facing his camcorder, he'll ask them to recollect the drive and fatal car accident they had on the way to his Bar Mitzvah. An accident that led to his parent’s divorce.

Maya Mcmanus Ronen's debut film focuses on exploring life in the kibbutz of Neot Smadar. This kibbutz was reestablished by a group of like-minded individuals who left Jerusalem and decided to build a cooperative and horizontally structured community. Every couple of years, a significant event takes place here — residents swap houses with each other. What's unique is that no one knows in advance which house they will receive. Maya Ronen's film is an attempt to peer into the unconventional life of this community, understand the rules it lives by, and delve into the intricacies of the regular ritual of house swapping.

A phone call wakes me up early in the morning. My older brother got into trouble. Again. After another entanglement, I realize that I can no longer ignore the problems that follow him around, and which seem to be taking over my life. I use the camera to get answers from my family and a wall of silence melts away. Through a mix of amusing, intense, and eye-opening encounters, I begin to understand how relations in my family, especially with my mother, were influenced by an unspoken expression. Strange Birds is an intimate film that reveals an unspoken story about special parenting and the children who grow up in its shadow.

In 1945, a few months after his release from Auschwitz, Yechiel De-Nur, still in his striped jacket, sat down and started writing. After two weeks, he was reborn as Ka-Tzetnik, “the man from the camps.” The books that he wrote were translated into 32 languages and sold millions, while the author himself hid behind the pseudonym Ka-Tzetnik. At the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 his revelatory testimony revealed his true identity as he described Auschwitz as “the other planet,” a place outside of human judgment. Years later, undergoing an experimental LSD treatment for trauma, he revisits his experience, imagining himself as a SS officer, and that changes everything.

After Franz Kafka's passing, he left behind a trove of unpublished manuscripts with explicit instructions for his close friend Max Brod to destroy them. Despite Kafka's wishes, Brod chose to preserve and publish the works, introducing the world to one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. This act of benevolent betrayal set forth a multi-generational saga that spans a century and ends with a real-life Kafkaesque trial.

This is the personal journey of the director who leaves her Arab-Muslim village and moves to Tel Aviv. While searching for an apartment, she encounters discrimination by most landlords because of her Arab origins. She finally finds an apartment, and meets her neighbor – Jonathan, a Jewish-Canadian man who immigrated to Israel. A love story ensues.

Can intimacy exhaustion in a monogamous marriage be avoided? Love is no longer present in my parent’s relationship. Echoing my own marriage, the question arises if there is a way to keep the spark.

Dizengoff Center, the first shopping center in Israel, has become a phenomenon, an icon, a city within a city. “The Center” is more than a shrine for consumption or a shopping place, for many people it’s a place they call “a home”. The Center will discover the story and the history of Dizengoff Center, layer by layer, from the ground it was built on, to the top floor and the secrets this place withholds. The film will travel from the past to the present in order to try and find out what makes this place so special.

The first 20 years of the film-maker's life he grew up in two places: in Jerusalem, and in an ashram in India, a thing he had to keep a secret. in the ashram it wae expected of him to devote his entire being to his guru. Thus, in his words, he could finally define the purpose of his life, understand the "truth" of the meaning of life and be enlightened 20 years later (quite a few in psychological therapy), the director sets out on a quest to find out what was hidden in his life in India, why his life in the Ashram still affects him even when he has not visited in years, And whether he grew up in a cult.

Millions of American Evangelicals are praying for the State of Israel. This film traces this unusual relationship, from rural Kentucky to the halls of government in Washington, through the moving of the American Embassy in Jerusalem and to the annexation plan of the West Bank.

“All my movies are personal without being autobiographical,” says Avi Nesher, a filmmaker who combines his personal life and the history of Israel in his films. This documentary examines the DNA of Nesher’s cinematic creations , which include musicals, dramas, and comedies, chronicling the homeland in which he started his career at the age of 24 and where he continues to create at 71.

A documentary about the life, work and death of Inbal Perlmutter. A local rock legend, different sex symbol and a trailblazing woman who was mysteriously killed in a car crash at the age of 27.

A film diary in which Perlov films the minutiae of his and his family's day-to-day life. From these small bits, he builds up a broad picture of life in Israel in the '70s and '80s.

Documentary filmmaker Yoav Shamir's depiction of the checkpoints that the Israel Defense Forces man in the Palestinian Authority.

A sensational discovery in Great Britain provides new insights into the life and death of the Roman Empire. It is the first intact skeleton of a Roman crucifixion victim ever discovered. A forensic investigation is being carried out on it - with CT scans, DNA profiling, isotope analysis and state-of-the-art forensic imaging technology.

The story of Ola Kravchenko who has been accused by her ex-boyfriend and by a documentary show to have been the murderer of Tair Rada but acquitted by Israel's state attorney office.

An untold side of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: gay Palestinians - Louie, Abdu and Fares - are hiding in Tel Aviv, and until they escape, they must remain 'the invisible men'.

A look at the work of Israel's controversial former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.