Matthew Cassel

Farming Under Fire in Gaza

Along the Green Line

Since the war in Gaza and the expanding occupation of the West Bank, a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians feels more distant than ever. In this three-part series, the reporter Matthew Cassel travels along the 1949 Armistice border, or ‘Green Line’, once seen as the best hope for a resolution. He meets Palestinians and Israelis living just kilometres apart, but shaped by vastly different realities.

Obaida

OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.

The Journey

Field of Vision and The New Yorker have created a six-part episodic documentary, filmed in 2015, that immerses us in the Syrian refugee crisis. Matthew Cassel, an independent multimedia journalist and filmmaker based in Istanbul, follows the seven-month, obstacle-laden 1700-mile journey of Aboud Shalhoub, a Syrian refugee who has fled the dangers of wartime Damascus in order to build a better life for his family in the Netherlands. Cassel's colleague Simon Safieh remained in Damascus with Aboud's wife and two children, who eventually join him in Europe.