Directing

Emad Burnat

Emad Burnat is a Palestinian farmer and filmmaker born in 1971. He is the first Palestinian nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His documentary "5 Broken Cameras" is a first-hand account of life and protests in Bil'in, a West Bank village adjacent to Israeli settlements. The film was co-directed by Burnat and Guy Davidi, an Israeli filmmaker. The film is structured in chapters around the destruction of each of Burnat's cameras and follows the evolution of a family over the course of five years of village upheaval. Five Broken Cameras is a Palestinian-Israeli-French co-production. The film's personal style and, in particular, Burnat's collaboration with an Israeli filmmaker, have been controversial within the Palestinian community due to the ongoing boycott against Israel by Palestinians. The boycott, however, was never intended to include a boycott of Israeli activists and the problem stems from the fact that Israel claimed the film as its own after its Oscar nomination in 2012.