Famed documentary filmmaker Mai Masri, a Palestinian living in Lebanon, shows us life on the ground during the 2006 Israeli invasion. Beirut is turned upside down in a torrent of Israeli shells and bombs as refugees from the south arrive. Masri focuses on the experience of a small group of individuals, including a relief worker, a theater performer who organizes workshops and performances with traumatized and displaced children, and a television journalist. Their activity is presented straightforwardly; the drama is in the situation and in the images themselves. Masri’s camera also captures a lasting legacy of the invasion: Lebanese praise for Hezbollah for having withstood the Israelis.

Summer 2006. The Israeli war on Lebanon. A boat embarks for a besieged Beirut to evacuate foreign nationals. Relief workers dig for corpses among the rubble of bombed buildings. Death and destruction are rendered in sober black-and-white images as ruthless as they are beautiful.

Detached from the daily horrors of the occupation, Ramallah filmmaker Ihad Jadallah nonetheless often finds himself compelled by producers, funders, collaborating artists and viewers to present himself and his work in accordance with a “meta-script” composed of victims, violence and shooters. Jadallah’s film is at once a parody and a rejection of these constraints.