Kamal Aljafari

Directing

Kamal Aljafari

Kamal Aljafari - (Arabic: كمال الجعفري) is an experimental Palestinian filmmaker born in Ramle in Palestine. He attended the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and now lives in Berlin, Germany. In 2009, he was a featured artist at the 2009 Robert Flaherty Film seminar in New York and was the Benjamin White Whitney fellow at Harvard University through 2009-2010. He taught filmmaking at The New Schoo…

Known For

With Hasan in GazaWith Hasan in Gaza · 2026
With Hasan in Gaza
★ 9.02026
MovieDocumentaryWar
Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered. What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown.
Going HomeGoing Home · 2026
Going Home
2026
MovieDocumentary
BalconiesBalconies · 2003
Balconies
2003
Movie
An experimental meditation focusing on the deteriorated and unfinished balconies of the home town of Kamal Aljafari, Ramla, and inspired by Romance sonámbulo by Federico García Lorca: "But now I am no longer me, and my house is no longer my House…"
Masao Adachi Takes a Passport PhotoMasao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo · 2026
Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo
2026
MovieDocumentary
A deeply personal portrait of one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in Japanese cinema: filmmaker, writer, and revolutionary Masao Adachi.
The RoofThe Roof · 2006
The Roof
2006
MovieDocumentary
This deceptively quiet film presents a portrait of Aljafaris family in Ramleh and Jaffa that hovers between documentary and cinematic memoir, guided by a nimble camera moving calmly but ceaselessly around the rooms of homes inhabited, damaged and ruined. The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafaris family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project. The use of stillness and off-screen space creates a sense of suspension, of time spent waiting, of aftermath, of lives lived elsewhere. Aljafaris striking use of his cast, his family, reveals the influence of Bressons use of nonprofessional actors as models whose performances emanate from their presence, not from acting.
A Fidai FilmA Fidai Film · 2024
A Fidai Film
★ 8.02024
MovieDocumentary
In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut. During this time, it raided the Palestinian Research Center and looted its entire archive. The archive contained historical documents of Palestine, including a collection of still and moving images. Taking this as a premise, 'A Fidai Film' aims to create a counter-narrative to this loss, presenting a form of cinematic sabotage that seeks to reclaim and restore the looted memories of Palestinian history. It’s a poignant exploration of identity, memory, and resistance, told through a unique blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques.
UNDRUNDR · 2024
UNDR
2024
MovieDocumentary
A helicopter sweeps the desert, surveying a land at once ancient and modern, natural and built. Farmers work their fields, children play and bells sound a call to prayer. Dynamite ruptures the earth. UNDR is a poignant found-footage essay film about an otherworldly landscape charged with history and potential that has become an eerie site of surveillance and incursion.
Visit IraqVisit Iraq · 2003
Visit Iraq
★ 8.02003
Movie
A poetic documentary on the abandoned agency of the airline company Iraqi Airways in Geneva.

Filmography

Sort