A scene from 5 Broken Cameras.
Both a moving first-person essay and an artful exercise in political advocacy, 5 Broken Cameras is about the experience of West Bank protests from the inside.
Amateur filmmaker Emad Burmat had five cameras smashed or shot by Israeli Defence Forces between 2005 to 2011 as he videotaped weekly demonstrations against the building of an Israeli settlement and a security wall (which was removed by court order in 2011).
Co-directed and edited by Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, 5 Broken Cameras is also a video diary of Burmat's friends and growing family in a world defined by angry confrontations, arrests, tear gas and death. During the course of the film, the filmmaker is evicted from his home, is arrested and suffers life-threatening injuries while struggling to maintain his philosophical equanimity.
Liam Lacey