Films

At the Edge of Hope

This documentary series brings together urgent, intimate, and deeply human films from Israel, Palestine, and beyond.Through stories that are both intimate and political, the films trace how personal lives are upended by war, how families and communities wrestle with grief and division, and how questions of identity and belonging are refracted through borders, histories, and everyday encounters.
 
They bear witness to the profound fractures that shape Israeli and Palestinian life, while also revealing the ways those fractures echo globally, in the halls of government, on university campuses, and in the rhythms of daily existence. Even amid devastation, the works gesture toward fragile possibilities: glimpses of connection, resilience, and the stubborn persistence of hope. More than chronicles of conflict, these films demand that we sit with complexity, listen across divides, and ask what it means to imagine a different future in a time of war.

Presented with

Holding Liat

FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE

Tuesday, October 28 at 7:00 p.m.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Phoenix Theatres State Wayne
35310 W Michigan Ave, Wayne, MI 48184

GET TICKETS

On October 7, 2023, Liat was abducted from her kibbutz by Hamas. In the days that followed, filmmaker Brandon Kramer began filming with her family, documenting their raw and unfiltered struggle as they searched for answers. What begins as a portrait of grief quickly becomes something more: a window into the deep fractures within Israeli society, the reach of global diplomacy, and the human cost of a war that continues to devastate Gaza and Israel alike.

At the center is Liat’s father, Yehuda, a US citizen, a pacifist, and a man unwilling to remain silent. Traveling to Washington with his family, he pleads for his daughter’s life while fiercely challenging both Israeli and American policies. Within the family itself, emotions and politics collide, exposing the tensions that mirror an entire society: fear and defiance, longing and rage, despair and fragile hope.

Winner of the Berlinale Documentary Film Award, Holding Liat is more than a chronicle of one family’s ordeal. It is an urgent, unflinching reminder of how personal trauma and political violence are inseparably bound, and how even in the darkest of moments, the possibility of reconciliation depends on recognizing the humanity of those on the other side.

2025
Directed by Brandon Kramer.
In Hebrew with English subtitles.
Running time 98 min.

The Palestine Exception

FILMMAKER Jennifer Ruth IN ATTENDANCE

Monday, November 11 at 7:00 p.m.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Phoenix Theatres State Wayne
35310 W Michigan Ave, Wayne, MI 48184

GET TICKETS
Universities are meant to be places where ideas can be argued without fear. Yet as Israel’s war on Gaza grinds on, that ideal feels increasingly fragile. Across the United States, administrators discipline students for protest, lawmakers threaten faculty, and new visa restrictions target Palestinian students. These are reminders that the space for dissent is narrowing fast,
 
The Palestine Exception looks squarely at this crisis of academic freedom. Through archival footage and candid interviews with scholars including Judith Butler, the film follows students and professors as they demand a ceasefire and divestment from companies tied to Israel. Their movement, already the largest U.S. anti-war uprising since the 1970s, meets a swift backlash, exposing what activists call the “Palestine exception,” where speech and assembly rights end the moment Israel is named.
 
The film resonates with today’s headlines while telling a story of campuses as both refuge and battleground, of personal and collective histories colliding, and of the stubborn insistence that a university remain a place for truth-telling, even when power wants silence.

USA. 2025
Directed by Jan Haaken & Jennifer Ruth,
In English.
Running time 70 min.