Latest news with #TheEncampments'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Palestinian and World Cinema Streamer Watermelon+ Launches with ‘The Teacher'
Distributor Watermelon Pictures (which launched last year) is proud to unveil its latest venture, a new streaming platform called Watermelon+. Debuting today, Thursday, May 8, the streamer aims to highlight the work of Palestinian filmmakers and world cinema as a whole. This comes at a time when some streamers are facing criticism for removing Palestinian films from their platform entirely. Watermelon+ comes on the heels of successful theatrical runs for the documentary 'The Encampments' and the feature debut for Oscar nominee Farah Nabulsi, 'The Teacher.' Nabulsi's Oscar-nominated short 'The Present' will also be available upon launch, while 'The Encampments' streams later this summer. Dozens of acclaimed films including 'From Ground Zero' (Palestine's Official 2025 Academy Awards entry) will be showcased on the platform, as well as Oscar nominees 'Omar' (2014 Best International Film), 'Five Broken Cameras' (2013 Best Documentary Feature), and 'Theeb' (2016 Best International Film). More from IndieWire How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Chaos Neon Nabs Cristian Mungiu's 'Fjord,' Starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve Co-founded by CEOS and brothers Badie and Hamza Ali, Watermelon Pictures has set out to create a wider audience for Palestinian cinema, bringing forth gems that are difficult to find elsewhere. Of this new initiative, Badie said in an official statement, 'Curating these films to ensure they had a proper home was a mission we were honored to begin and it's one we're committed to carrying forward. This is just the beginning. Our vision is to grow Watermelon+ into a must-have platform for underserved communities everywhere, a true home for bold, necessary storytelling that deserves to be seen.' Hamza added, 'Watermelon+ isn't just a platform for films — it's a launchpad for the next generation of underserved artists whose stories will shape the future. It's not only a preservation of our past; it's fuel for our future.' 'The Encampments' was able to have a particular impact as its release coincided with the arrest and detainment of one of its subjects, Mahmoud Khalil, one of the leaders of the Columbia University protests depicted in the documentary. In his review for IndieWire, Siddhant Adlakha wrote of the film, 'It ought to be no surprise that 'The Encampments' is a full-throated call to pro-Palestinian activism. What makes it artistically triumphant, however, is its sense of contemporary and historical detail, owed to both footage shot by the filmmakers, as well as by the protesters themselves.' Supporters can watch and subscribe beginning today for $7.99 a month or $79.99 annually at of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Washington Post
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
‘The Encampments': Behind the scenes at Columbia's student protests
'The Encampments' hits theaters with the kind of PR money can't buy. One of the voices of resistance to the war in Gaza featured in the new documentary — which goes behind the scenes at the protests that roiled the campuses of Columbia University and other colleges last spring — is Mahmoud Khalil. That's a name you may have heard. Born in a Syrian refugee camp to Palestinian parents, Khalil, who received his master's degree from Columbia's school of international affairs last semester, was one of the student leaders of the protest and a negotiator between students and the school administration. On March 8, he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Despite having a green card and being married to an American citizen, deportation proceedings have been initiated against him. But his backstory, in which Khalil explains his journey from refugee camp to campus activism, is only a small part of 'The Encampments,' which arrives in the choppy wake of last month's thematically similar documentary 'October 8.' Co-directed by Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman, 'The Encampments' aims, among other things, to counter that earlier film's narrative about spiking campus antisemitism in the aftermath of Hamas's attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. To do so, the directors of 'The Encampments' focus on the organizers of Columbia's protest, including student spokesperson Sueda Polat and Grant Miner, a Columbia grad student and president of the Student Workers of Columbia union. As they characterize it, the initial 14-day protest — a kind of sit-in or tent city centering on demands that Columbia divest from weapons manufacturers and defense contractors with ties to Israel — was more about kumbaya moments than bomb-throwing. Although it eventually devolved into some violent clashes with pro-Israel counterprotesters, the encampment, organizers say, was a mostly peaceful gathering of people from all religious and ethnic backgrounds, with hardly a rude word spoken. 'Where are the sound bites of people saying antisemitic things?' asks one of the film's subjects, a worker in Columbia's communications office who appears on camera with his face obscured and voice altered, presumably because he disagreed with the university's handling of the protests. Never mind the ample evidence that there were such encounters. The film's vibe of harmony — at least inside the encampment, where leaders claim antisemitism had no home — seems more than a little stage-managed, if not whitewashed. Students in yarmulkes are shown side by side with those in kaffiyehs. Singers deliver an impromptu rendition of the Mexican folk song 'Cielito Lindo,' a woman hands out free chicken wraps. It's 'We Are the World,' against a backdrop of tense negotiation. There is, however, a kernel of truth in there. Despite accusations of rampant antisemitism by some Jewish students, faculty and others, the documentary points to a surprising number of Jews among the protesters, including Miner, a PhD candidate who was ultimately expelled for his role in the protest. Jewish Voice for Peace, a leftist group in solidarity with Palestinians, was one of the main protest organizers, Miner notes. Miner also offers a provocative explanation of why some Jews may say they felt unsafe, and how their voices have been amplified. 'There's a certain minority of students who feel threatened by the very presence of people who are advocating for stopping a genocide,' Miner says. 'And those people are listened to much, much more than the majority of the people who are advocating for cutting ties with a genocidal regime.' It's an argument that strays perilously close to the trope of undue Jewish influence. In contrast to 'October 8,' Pritsker and Workman barely acknowledge that any protesters indulged in such tropes. There's an early clip of Minouche Shafik's testimony before Congress, in which Rep. Lisa C. McClain, a Michigan Republican, is shown grilling Columbia's then-president about whether she considers the chant 'From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free' to be problematic. (Some take it to be a call for the eradication of Israel.) 'Yes,' Shafik eventually concedes, after hemming and hawing. More embarrassingly, in the same clip, McClain mispronounces intifada, the Arabic word for uprising or resistance, as 'infitada.' So does Fox News host Greg Gutfeld in another sound bite. There is one moment of heartbreaking poignancy in the film: We listen to a 2024 audio recording of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza, Hind Rajab, speaking to an emergency dispatcher after her family's car was fired upon by what appears to have been Israeli troops. Hind was ultimately killed, along with several other family members and two paramedics who rushed to their aid. After protesters took over Columbia's Hamilton Hall, they temporarily renamed the academic building in the girl's memory. It's a stark and powerful reminder of what the protesters are actually protesting. Too often that gets lost in 'The Encampments,' whose name, perhaps unintentionally, suggests the very conflict between factions — both armed and unarmed — that is at stake here. Labels are bandied about, without definition: Zionist, anti-Zionist, genocide, terrorism, resistance, colonialism. Too often, in a film about an ostensibly peaceful form of dissent, it feels like adversaries are being targeted, albeit subtly, when the real enemy is war itself. Unrated. At AFI Silver Theatre. Contains scenes of violence and some coarse language. In English and some Arabic with subtitles. 82 minutes.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Encampments' Review: Timely Doc Covers 2024 U.S. Campus Protests Through the Eyes of the Students
'The Encampments' could hardly be opening on a more timely date. The documentary, which chronicles the encampments at Columbia from the students' perspective, will hit New York theaters three days after its premiere at CPH:DOX, then expand to Los Angeles a week later. In the lead-up to the film's international screening, two of its protagonists, both students at Columbia University, landed on the front pages of many newspapers: Mahmoud Khalil, arrested by ICE for protesting against the war in Gaza, and Grant Miner, who was expelled by Columbia for the same reason. The film was rushed into release for these reasons. However, its timeliness is not the only reason to see 'The Encampments.' It is also an urgent protest film that carries the same conviction and resolve of the students who organized these demonstrations last spring. Directors Michael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker start the film with news media footage that calls the protestors 'radical,' 'extreme' and 'disgusting,' among other provocative terms. Then the filmmakers turn their lens on three students who were at the forefront of this situation. It's the classic bait-and-switch setup, designed to dispute and explain what you might have heard. More from Variety Lightdox Boards Monica Stromdahl's 'Flophouse America' Ahead of CPH:DOX World Premiere (EXCLUSIVE) Putin Assassination Target Christo Grozev on Why Life Has Become Even More Dangerous: 'The Bad Guys Now Are Seen as Being OK in the U.S.' Sex-Selective Abortions in Armenia, Moldova's Healthcare System, Infertility in Georgia, and More Explored at CPH:DOX The film concentrates on three of the student leaders. Khalil, who is of Palestinian origin, was tasked with presenting his colleagues' demands, as the student negotiator with the university administrators. Miner, who is Jewish, was a student workers union leader. The third is Sueda Polat, a human rights graduate student whose face is the first we see. Through front-facing camera interviews, the three talk about the reasons they joined Columbia and why they felt compelled to protest the war in Gaza. Their words are simple, straightforward and clear. Their faces carry the same emotions. They put their demands plainly: They don't want the money they pay Columbia for their education to be used to kill innocent people in Gaza. In their demand that their university not invest in corporations that make weapons, they recall the previous generations of student activists who protested against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s — a historical linkage that the filmmakers make clear through the use of archival footage. 'The Encampments' tells this story in a linear and easily digestible way. The students started protesting, then demanded divestment from the university board of trustees, a playbook they have successfully followed before amid other conflicts in other parts of the world. When Columbia ignored all their demands, they decided to camp out on the lawns of the university. The filmmakers had open access to the campus and installed themselves close to the action within the tents the students had erected. Though the images might seem familiar to those who followed this story on social media, they take on added resonance in this context, since we see more than just short snippets or newsreels. Longer scenes take in the complete story of what was happening at Columbia at the time, with testimony from the students who led and participated in the movement. Positioned close to the chants and to the loudspeaker proclamations, audiences are transported to the lawns and halls of Columbia, where cameras capture not just the protests but all the other actions that sustained this movement and gave it longevity: the music the students danced to, the food they shared, the poems they read. Acting as cinematographer, Pritsker moves through the tapestry of the many students in action at the encampments, the conviction on their faces filling the frame. The editing is fast and nimble, yet slows down enough when needed to let particularly moving scenes play out in their time with no rush. The seamless cutting from the students' testimony and back to the encampments allows the story to be organically told. This is most effective later in the film, as the encampments spread to other universities. Suddenly, there are interviews with more people, and the story goes from New York to California to Georgia and many other campuses. Through it all, Workman and his co-editor Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi keep it all flowing smoothly, never losing the narrative thread. The music, which is not original to the film, only comes in at a handful of pivotal moments, adding to the tension but also freeing the rest of the film of didactically guiding the audience's emotions. There is no continuous score hammering the emotional highs. Rather, shorter musical pieces are used only when absolutely needed, giving the film a stark, gritty, cinéma vérité style. At only 80 minutes, 'The Encampments' tells a fascinating, ripped-from-the-headlines story. Its brevity is apt, since the incomplete story is still unfolding, and nobody knows where or how it ends. However, as a snapshot of a particular few weeks in which a protest movement was born and spread, it's an effective and prescient documentary. Eerily, in one of the last shots in which Khalil is shown, he's asked by an off-camera voice, 'What would happen to you if you were deported?' to which he responds, 'I will live.' 'The Encampments' shows that same determination and confidence from other young people who carry the responsibility of attempting change. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Encampments,' Macklemore-Produced Doc About Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Movement, Reveals U.S. Release Date and First-Look Images (EXCLUSIVE)
Timely doc 'The Encampments,' which delves into the Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Encampment that grew into a wave of international student activism and subsequently sparked the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, is now set for release in U.S. movie theaters. Watermelon Pictures has announced a March 28 theatrical launch at the Angelika Film Center in New York, with a nationwide theatrical expansion to follow. 'The Encampments' features Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (pictured below), a recent Columbia graduate who was detained earlier this month by federal immigration agents in New York as part of Trump's crackdown on students who have protested against the war in Gaza. A judge has ordered the Trump administration not to deport Khalil pending a legal fight over his detention. More from Variety Controversial 'White Gold of Greenland' Doc Finds Distribution After Being Pulled in Denmark Amid Trump Bid for Arctic Island President Trump Moves to Gut Voice of America; CPJ Calls Executive Order 'Outrageous' Marc Maron Tells Bill Maher: 'You're a Bitch' for Agreeing With 'Some of the Stuff Trump Is Doing' The doc — produced by Grammy-winning rap artist Macklemore and directed by BreakThrough News journalist and producer Kei Pritsker and filmmaker Michael T Workman — will world premiere on March 25, ahead of its theatrical release, at the CPH:DOX Film Festival in Copenhagen. The Columbia University encampment started in April 2024, when roughly 50 students pitched tents on university grounds in an occupation that snowballed into an international protest movement. 'The Encampments' chronicles the protest's escalation 'from Columbia's administration banning student organizations for Palestine to the mass arrests that broke a 50-year police ban on campus,' according to the provided synopsis. 'As students faced police raids, media attacks and institutional repression, their movement spread to universities across the country and beyond, making history in real time.' The doc includes access to the student organizers at several encampments, and also to a whistleblower from high-up in the administration of an Ivy League university 'who shares exclusive insights into what was taking place within the halls of the ivory tower as students protested down below.' Khalil, who received his master's degree from Columbia's school of international affairs last semester, served as a negotiator for students as they bargained with university officials over an end to the encampment. In a statement, directors Pritsker and Workman called 'The Encampments' 'a testament to the courage of young people to not only imagine a better world, but to fight for it in the face of violence and repression.' They added: 'This film challenges the dominant media narrative by revealing the true spirit of the encampments — what it felt like to be there, the emotions that fueled the students and what motivated their drastic action.' Added Macklemore, 'Students have always led the charge for justice, from the sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement to the campus protests against South African apartheid. They've never been on the wrong side of history. The encampments that started at Columbia are part of that legacy, inspiring millions of people around the world.' 'The Encampments' is a BreakThrough News production in conjunction with Watermelon Pictures and Macklemore. Producers on the doc also include Pritsker, Workman, Matthew Bele and Munir Atalla, with Benjamin Becker serving as executive producer. Watermelon Pictures was founded in 2024 by brothers Hamza Ali and Badie Ali, with Alana Hadid leading the team as creative director. The company, which describes itself as being rooted in Palestinian culture and creativity, has released 'From Ground Zero,' which was Palestine's entry for the 2025 Oscars' international feature film category, and Mahdi Fleifel's 'To a Land Unknown,' which premiered last year at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Oscars 2026: First Blind Predictions Including Timothée Chalamet, Emma Stone, 'Wicked: For Good' and More What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
John Oliver Takes Jab At Mel Gibson Following Justice Dept. Attorney Firing: 'Best Known For His Work In Screaming'
Following the news that a high-ranking Justice Department attorney, Liz Oyer, was seemingly fired for opposing the restoration of Mel Gibson's gun rights after he lost them due to a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction, John Oliver took a jab at the scandal-riddled actor and director himself. The host kicked off Last Week Tonight by saying Gibson, 'best known for his work in screaming,' had a damning Wikipedia section filled with details on his various controversies, but that the real gem was his father's entry. More from Deadline High-Ranking Justice Department Attorney Alleges She Was Fired For Disputing Reinstatement Of Mel Gibson's Gun Rights Watermelon Pictures Unveils Macklemore-Produced Doc 'The Encampments' Featuring Detained Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil John Oliver Says ICE Assertion That Detention Is "Nonpunitive" Is Like Claiming 'Wicked' Wasn't Too Long: "Undercut By Empirical Evidence" 'I recommend you check out his Wikipedia page, and while you're there, check out his dad's,' he quipped. 'Because the opening paragraph alone is spectacular. 'Hutton Peter Gibson was an American conspiracy theorist, holocaust denier, writer on sedevacantism' — which is a belief that there hasn't been a valid pope since 1958 — 'a World War II veteran, the Jeopardy! grand champion for 1968 and the father of 11 children, one of whom is the actor and director Mel Gibson.' That is a fascinating man! Imagine having so many terrible views that producing Mel Gibson is not the worst thing about you.' Tying in that news with Mahmoud Khalil's detention, which the ACLU has condemned as 'unlawful,' Oliver said president Donald Trump's claim that the arrest was to crack down on antisemitism is 'pretty rich, given the top DOD press secretary was recently found to have a history of racist and antisemitic tweets; Musk and JD Vance both recently supported Germany's AFD, a party with ties to neo-Nazis; and of course, there was this sh– [flashing on screen an image of Musk's Nazi-like salute] and that was all before you get to the efforts this week to make sure that this f—ing guy [Gibson] — whose views on the Jews are let's say a matter of public record — got his guns back.' Adding of Khalil, a Columbia student who has said antisemitism has no place in his activism and has been supported by Jewish classmates on campus, Oliver said, 'Maybe you feel differently about the Israel-Palestine conflict than Khalil, maybe you don't agree with things that I've said about it, but if someone can be deported as a green card holder for speech in support of Palestine or anything else this administration objects to, that should chill you to the bone. And I'll be honest, anyone who's been through the U.S. immigration process has probably had a lot of anxious feelings stirred up this week. I came here to start working at The Daily Show on a visa; when we started this show, I had a green card and five years ago, I became a citizen. I know what it's like to live in constant fear of being kicked out of somewhere you see as your home.' Oliver concluded his opening segment by calling the arrest a 'f—ing disgrace' and stating that the public response toward it should be 'unequivocal.' 'Rights, like freedom of speech, are a fundamental part of living in this country,' he said, 'and if we do not protect them, then unfortunately like the Teslas inexplicably for sale on the White House lawn this week, they could be going, going, gone.' Best of Deadline TV Show Book Adaptations Arriving In 2025 So Far Book-To-Movie Adaptations Coming Out In 2025 Everything We Know About 'Freakier Friday' So Far
