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Exclusive: Sunset Lane Media has taken rights to the nonfiction book The Missing Peace from Dennis Ross, who served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under U.S. President George H. W. Bush and was the chief U.S. negotiator under President Bill Clinton.

The Missing Peace chronicles the behind-the-scenes negotiations of the 2000 Camp David Summit between President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The project will be produced by David Beaubaire for Sunset Lane Media and Steve Silverman. The book was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The feature project will capture the intense 15-day negotiations at Camp David 25 years ago this month – when, despite decades of conflict and mistrust, the parties came closer than ever before to a comprehensive peace agreement. The adaptation centers on the three leaders but also highlights the ensemble of advisors, intermediaries, and...

The tanks are rolling into Gaza, as the Israeli invasion seems to finally be happening, after a pause for humanitarian aid and mostly-fruitless negotiations for the release of 220 hostages being held by Hamas.

No one knows how this will end, but one thing is clear: This will be remembered as Bibi’s war.

Yes, of course, Hamas started this round of violence, with their appalling mass slaughter of over 1,400 innocent civilians and the kidnapping of hundreds more. They bear a profound moral responsibility that cannot be justified or excused, no...

Writer/director Dror Moreh’s film, The Human Factor, is a simultaneously riveting and illuminating examination of American foreign policy in the Middle East since the mid-1980s and through to the promise of the attempt summit at Camp David near the end of Bill Clinton’s tenure as president. This is simply an incredibly poignant and timely film that illustrates how this region has shaped American foreign policy for the better part of a quarter century.

The Human Factor is a look behind the curtain with those individuals within the United States government whose job it was to attempt to secure peace between Israel and its neighboring countries to establish a Palestinian homeland. But, what makes The Human Factor a more universal treatise on human nature is the approach it takes to the stance of learning from the mistakes of the past so that they are not perpetuated well into the future.

Left to right: Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat at Camp David, in July 2000.

Photo credit: William J. Clinton Presidential Library. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most intractable the world has seen. The Human Factor focuses on the effort to bring a resolution to that conflict through negotiations mediated by the U.S., but particularly on the human side, the human factor, in that effort. Interestingly, it is also presented from the viewpoint of the guys in the middle, the American mediators, rather than the two sides in the conflict. The result is an engrossing, surprisingly gripping documentary that makes one ache for what might have been.

The Human Factor is also a revealing documentary about the long-running effort to resolve the conflict, that offers up remarkable insights, some unexpected humorous moments, and many fascinating details about the process and the personalities involved.

The Human Factor Sony Pictures Classics Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Dror Moreh Cast: Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Gamal Helal, Aaron David Miller, Daniel C. Kurtzer Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/22/21 Opens: May 7, 2021 What makes for great diplomacy? Consider these two schools of thought. […]

The post The Human Factor Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Documentarian Dror Moreh’s new film, The Human Factor, is a riveting and illuminating examination of American foreign policy in the Middle East since the mid-1980s and through to the promise of the attempt summit at Camp David near the end of Bill Clinton’s tenure as president. This is an incredibly poignant and timely film that illustrates how this region has shaped American foreign policy for the better part of a quarter century.

The Human Factor is a look behind the curtain with those individuals within the United States government whose job it was to attempt to secure peace between Israel and its neighboring countries to establish a Palestinian homeland. But, what makes The Human Factor a more universal treatise on human nature is the approach it takes to the stance of learning from the mistakes of the past so that they are not perpetuated well into the future.

Much of the world views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a fixed problem with no end in sight. Few can explain why, but “The Human Factor” finds those who can. With the white-knuckle intensity of Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh’s engrossing documentary tracks glacial efforts to broker a peace deal over the past three decades.

“The Human Factor” drills down on the fluctuating tensions between Yasser Arafat and Israel’s revolving door of leadership. By speaking exclusively to the handful of negotiators involved in America’s efforts to broker a deal, Moreh’s focused collection of talking heads and archival footage is limited to a handful of takeaways about what went wrong. It turns out some policy wonks make eloquent storytellers and they excel at putting their own failings in context. The result is a must-see for anyone looking to understand why this bloody turf war shows no sign of letting up.

No filmmaker is better at unraveling the complexities of Middle Eastern turmoil than Dror Moreh. In the Oscar-nominated “The Gatekeepers,” the director looked at the Israeli/Palestine conflict through the eyes of the six living men who have run Shin Bet, Israel’s Secret Service. We expect Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Ami Avalon, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin to be hardliners, but they turn out to be smart, sane and reasoned about the sources and solutions for Israel’s 45-year security problem. They know about it first-hand, because they have had to deal with it every day, unlike the politicians who come and go, for whom they have little respect. The one Israeli leader who did make a difference – Yitzhak Rabin – was felled by an assassin’s bullet on November 4, 1995.

Moreh adopted a similar approach with “The Human Factor”, which looks behind the scenes of three decades of...

No filmmaker is better at unraveling the complexities of Middle Eastern turmoil than Dror Moreh. In the Oscar-nominated “The Gatekeepers,” the director looked at the Israeli/Palestine conflict through the eyes of the six living men who have run Shin Bet, Israel’s Secret Service. We expect Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Ami Avalon, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin to be hardliners, but they turn out to be smart, sane and reasoned about the sources and solutions for Israel’s 45-year security problem. They know about it first-hand, because they have had to deal with it every day, unlike the politicians who come and go, for whom they have little respect. The one Israeli leader who did make a difference – Yitzhak Rabin – was felled by an assassin’s bullet on November 4, 1995.

Moreh adopted a similar approach with “The Human Factor”, which looks behind the scenes of three decades of...

For Dror Moreh, making “The Human Factor” was all about taking viewers into the room where it happens. The documentary chronicles the 30-year effort to achieve peace in the Middle East between Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. leaders, told through the unique perspectives of six American negotiators who were indeed in the rooms where they tried and failed to make peace happen.

“Normally when we get to understanding diplomacy, we are getting the photo ops or sound bites that those types of politicians give us,” Moreh tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Btl Experts: Documentary panel (watch above). “Since there’s been so many movies for me, as an Israeli, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the Israeli-Arab conflict from both sides, I was fed up with this kind of point of view. … For me, the American negotiators were the professionals in the rooms, were with the leaders and could tell me a different story,...

For his documentary The Human Factor, about the elusive quest for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, director Dror Moreh spent time with American diplomats involved in those negotiations. A lot of time.

“With [negotiator] Dennis Ross I spent 35 hours,” Moreh says during the film’s panel at Deadline’s Contenders Documentary awards-season event. “With each one of them more than 10, 12 hours.”

Moreh’s documentary, from Sony Pictures Classics, sheds new light on why peace talks going back decades ultimately failed.

“You get those amazing stories, behind the scenes of what happened really, of the human relationship and the human drama between the characters that are in the movie,” he says. Those characters include former Secretary of State James Baker and Plo chairman Yasser Arafat.

To illustrate the story, Moreh gained access to exceptional materials.

“Luckily enough I got those really unbelievable, amazing still photos which were shot inside the [negotiating] rooms,...

The Middle East peace process has long proved to be an elusive riddle for dignitaries and denizens alike. Dror Moreh’s “The Human Factor” seeks to demystify decades of negotiations through the eyes of those who were there.

Focusing on the past 25 years, this film is an unprecedented look into how close the world has come to what is commonly touted as an unattainable goal. Negotiators Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Gamal Helal, Aaron David Miller, Daniel Kurtzer, and Robert Malley help put the historic moments in perspective as they represent different administrations.

Continue reading ‘The Human Factor’ Trailer: New Doc Pulls The Curtain Back On The Middle East Peace Negotiations at The Playlist.