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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...

Comcast-owned Sky’s Sky Documentaries and its streaming service Now will give viewers a front-row seat for an exploration of recent history and topics that have shaped it, along with big names that played key roles in it — all through the eyes of legendary journalist and interviewer David Frost. That is the promise of new documentary series David Frost vs, which will start airing in the U.K. on Sunday, Feb. 23, with MSNBC set to air it starting on Sunday, April 27.

“Pulling from an archive of over 10,000 interviews recorded over more than 50 years, David Frost vs centers on era-defining David Frost interviews, unveiling a fresh perspective on today through the battles of yesterday,” according to a synopsis. Frost became a household name around the world for his TV interviews with former U.S. President Richard Nixon. “Seen through Frost’s eyes, we encounter the mid-to-late 20th century as a...

Wilfred Frost is getting ready to put much of his family business on public display.

Frost, who may best be known for his anchor turns on both CNBC in the U.S., and Sky News, is also CEO of Paradine Productions, the production vehicle founded in 1961 by his father, the renowned journalist and interviewer Sir David Frost. Starting Sunday, April 27, MSNBC will air “David Frost Vs,” a six-part documentary series that examines seismic changes in culture using decades’ of the senior Frost’s legendary interviews with everyone from The Beatles to Muhammad Ali.

“These are moments in history where he had a front-row seat,” says Wilfred Frost, during a recent interview. “This is not an archive show.”

The series will examine themes such as civil rights, college protests and cultural revolution, using Frost’s archive of more than 10,000 interviews with figures who were celebrated or controversial, and sometimes both. Some...

In January of 2024, Irish barrister Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh soberingly suggested that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.” She was arguing at the International Court of Justice, at The Hague, on behalf of South Africa’s claim that Israel was acting with genocidal intent.

One domino of genocide and ethnic cleansing is mass displacement. For those lucky enough to get out of a war zone, a harrowing journey as a refugee awaits. In his home video-style documentary Notes on Displacement, Palestinian director Khaled Jarrar accompanies a Syrian family on a long and uncertain voyage from Yarmouk Camp, outside Damascus, to Germany.

Terse and frequently nauseating, Notes on Displacement fulfills its title’s promise as a loosely tied-together collection of scenes, diaristic in nature,...

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is documented through the lens of Swedish public television in Göran Hugo Olsson’s film Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958–1989. This film uses archival footage to create a powerful narrative. It is both a historical account and a critique of the blunt, sledgehammer way that the media frequently changes people’s thinking.

1958–1989 is an important time range because it includes two major events: the end of the Nakba and the rise of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Peace is a dream that can always be seen but never reached here. The archival clips present a stark contrast between the joyful portrayal of Israel’s beginning and the hushed narratives of displaced Palestinians, which begs the question of representation.

Olsson challenges us to consider our roles as consumers of media narratives through this historical lens, inviting viewers to engage in critical thinking. The film becomes more...

Legendary daytime talk show host Phil Donahue passed away last night at the age of 88 after a long illness. Donahue practically invented many conventions that are now talk-show staples, such as walking into the audience and interacting with its members. As his show took off in the 1970s, he also tackled issues that no other talk show dared touch. “If there had been no Phil Donahue Show, there would be no Oprah Winfrey show,” Winfrey said in 2002. “He was the first to acknowledge that women are interested in more than mascara tips and cake recipes — that we’re intelligent, we’re concerned about the world around us and we want the best possible lives for ourselves.”

Donahue’s signature cadence, dramatic mannerisms and audience interactions not only made for engaging TV but a go-to impression for three generations of Saturday Night Live cast members.

Joe Piscopo’s version in 1982 was...

Shueisha announced that they will be fully revamping its long-selling history manga series “Learning Through Manga: World History,” with all 18 volumes to be released on Oct 4.

The new version, which will be the first major revamp in 22 years since its release in 2002, will change the format from the previous large-format hardcover to a more portable softcover and will also completely renew the content.

The cover illustrations for all 18 volumes is drawn by 16 popular manga artists, including Hirohiko Araki (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure), Tatsuya Endo (Spy x Family), and Kohei Horikoshi (My Hero Academia).

Below are the titles of all 18 volumes, the manga artists responsible for the cover & the illustrations:

1. Civilizations of the Orient and Mediterranean – Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece

Cover Illustrator: Yasuhisa Hara Figure depicted: Rameses II

2. The Beginning of Chinese Civilization and Empire – From Yellow River to Tang Dynasty

Cover illustrator: Hiroyuki Asada Figure depicted: Qin Shi Huang

3. The Glory...

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...

Spy Ops Episode 5 began discussing the Mossad’s role in eliminating almost every member of Black September, which sent shockwaves across the world. The Munich Olympics massacre left a scar that will be hard to erase. Revenge was the motivation of the Israeli government. The only member they could not find was Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of Black September and a close associate of Yasser Arafat of the Plo. Spy Ops Episode 6 is the continuation of Israel’s hunt to neutralize Salameh.

What Happened In Lillehammer, Norway?

The Mossad never stopped their search for Ali Hassan Salameh. They tried to locate him in Lebanon and Europe in the hope of catching him red-handed, but he was nowhere to be found. There were several pictures of him circulating with Yasser Arafat and several other groups, which proved that he was alive, but he was like a ghost who appears and disappears without a trace.

Spy Ops Episode 4 was about all the conspiracy theories revolving around the unsuccessful attempt made on kill Pope John Paul II’s life. There is still no conclusive ending to this story, even though there were many avenues that allowed the intelligence agencies to find answers. Spy Ops Episode 5 is about the most daring intelligence agency that ever existed. No spy operation documentary series is complete without mentioning some of the most audacious rescue attempts made by Mossad agents of Israel. This episode focuses on the operation carried out by Israeli intelligence to locate and kill the members of the terrorist outfit Black September.

What happened at the 1972 Munich Olympics?

Spy Ops Episode 5 begins with the terrifying footage of the Palestinian terrorists of the group Black September holding the Israeli contingent of athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics. We get to see testimony given by a former Israeli swimming champion...

Though raised in Brooklyn, actor turned producer/director Danny A. Abeckaser was born in Israel. Unfortunately, that birthright isn’t enough to lend authenticity to “The Engineer,” which feels very much like an American B-movie stab at turning Israeli anti-terrorist operations of 30 years ago into formulaic action fodder — without much action, even. A miscast Emile Hirsch plays a Shin Bet agent tasked with hunting down the mastermind behind a series of suicide bombings. Arriving at yet another low ebb in Israeli international relations over Palestinian issues, this frequently unconvincing and clunky would-be thriller will have a hard time stirring much enthusiasm in most territories. Lionsgate is releasing to limited U.S. theaters and home formats on August 18.

It begins, with a burst of explanatory onscreen text, in the fall of 1993, as Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Plo leader Yasser Arafat were in Washington D.C. attempting to broker peace under the auspices of President Clinton.

Imad Mughniyeh was responsible for more American deaths in terrorist attacks before the devastating 9/11 bombings and was able to outsmart not only the CIA but also the Mossad. Making matters even more difficult was the fact that no one knew what he looked like. By 2001, he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list with a $15 million bounty for information leading to his arrest. The reward was later bumped up to $25 million. He ultimately appeared on the most wanted list in 42 countries before he died was assassinated at the age of 45 in a car bombing in 2008.

Showtime’s new limited series “Ghosts of Beirut” shines the spotlight on the terrorist and the CIA and Mossad’s attempts to capture him. The Washington Post’s national security reporter Shane Harris recently conducted a Zoom conversation with co-creators Greg Barker and Avi Issacharoff and star Dina Shihabi.

“He’s one of...

While traveling around the world to present his previous film, “Off Frame”, an all-archival exhumation of Palestinian revolutionary cinema, Mohanad Yaqubi met someone who claimed to have a voluminous collection of pro-Palestinian work . . . in Japan. “R21” actually starts with the meeting of the two in Japan, and the subsequent transfer of the reels of the material, with the filmmaker then placing them in playback equipment, and creating a collage that actually starts with “highlights” of westerns (with Clint Eastwood for example), before moving to the main theme.

“R21 aka Restoring Solidarity” is screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the First Look 2023 program

In that fashion, the first footage refers to the 1960 demonstrations in Japan after the signing of the treaty with the US, and soon connects with the struggle of the Plo for Palestinian rights between the 1960 and 1980. An interview with Yasser Arafat, who repeatedly...

Islamabad. Feb 3 (Ians) The Pakistan Cricket Board (Pcb) has appointed former player Yasir Arafat as the national team’s new bowling coach and will also serve as the head coach whenever Mickey Arthur is not available, according to a news report.

Arthur is set to be unveiled as Pakistan’s ‘team director’ soon and will have the option of choosing when to accompany the team due to his commitment with Derbyshire and his reluctance to take on a full-time coaching role, said the Pakistan Observer newspaper in a report on Friday.

Arafat, the former Pakistan international who has been appointed to take over the role held by Saqlain Mushtaq and former bowling coach Shaun Tait, is likely to lead Pakistan on its tour of Sri Lanka in July and the Asia Cup in September before Arthur joins the team for the Odi World Cup in India and Pakistan’s tour...

Barbara Walters died on Friday, Dec. 30 at age 93, and tributes have been pouring in to honour the trailblazing television journalist.

Known for her annual “Most Fascinating People” specials and being the first woman to anchor a network television newscast, Walters shattered the glass ceiling during an era when TV news was dominated by men, paving the way for new generations of women who followed her path.

Read More: Barbara Walters, Legendary Journalist And TV Icon, Dead At 93

Having interviewed global newsmakers ranging from Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to Plo leader Yasir Arafat, in 1997 Walters changed the face of daytime television with “The View”, in which she presided over a panel of female co-hosts to discuss the issues of the day; Walters stepped down from the show in 2014.

Among the many to play tribute to Walters was Oprah Winfrey, who praised Walters for being her “role model.”

View this post on...

Barbara Walters, the legendary Emmy-award winning broadcast journalism pioneer and co-creator of “The View”, has died. She was 93 years old.

ABC News confirmed the news on Friday. No cause of death was given. Disney CEO Bob Iger tweeted that Walters died on Friday evening at her home in New York.

Throughout her more than 50-year career, Walter became a staple in broadcasting, helming the “Today” show ABC News, “20/20”, “The View”, and her annual “Most Fascinating People” special, while simultaneously paving the way for other female journalists.

Making a name in an industry dominated by men became an unspoken routine for Walters who began working for “20/20” in 1978. Joining the news magazine reunited Walters with her former “Today” co-host, Hugh Downs, and solidified what became her legacy.

Walters was born on September 25, 1929 in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in Boston, Miami and New York, the latter of which is where she launched...

Mumbai, Oct 17 (Ians) Former India cricketer Robin Uthappa has praised the confidence level of ex-skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, saying he was instrumental in the team winning the nerve-wracking group match against Pakistan in the 2007 T20 World Cup.

Uthappa said September 14, 2007 will remain etched in his memory forever after the arch-rivals played out a thriller in the inaugural edition of the T20 World Cup in Durban. This was a match which was a sign of things to come, as the Dhoni era in Indian cricket began with this epic win in the tournament.

Put in to bat, India rode on Uthappa’s superb half-century and Dhoni’s 33 to post 141/9 in their 20 overs, with Mohammad Asif taking four wickets for Pakistan.

In the run chase, the match swung wildly. Even though Pakistan lost wickets at regular intervals, Misbah-ul-Haq kept his side in the hunt. It came down to 12 runs needed off the last six deliveries,...

Perhaps it’s time for another meeting between officials from Israel and Palestine like the series of off-the-books negotiations that took place in Oslo, Norway, back in 1993. Those sessions — conducted in secret over nearly six months, since Israeli policy forbade interacting with or otherwise acknowledging the authority of the Palestinian Liberation Organization — paid off in a very public handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Plo leader Yasser Arafat, photographed with then-u.S. President Bill Clinton.

But the U.S. had little to do with the Oslo Accords, as J.T. Rogers’ Tony-winning play “Oslo” reminded audiences when it premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater in 2016. The discussions were brokered by a nonpartisan Norwegian couple, which provides a uniquely neutral framing device for an in-depth look at the issues concerning both sides. Now, as a recent outbreak of violence in the region reminds how precarious any peace agreement has been,...

“Oslo” tells the story behind the iconic photo of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasir Arafat shaking hands on the White House lawn in 1993. The new TV movie from HBO dramatizes the top-secret negotiations that led to the historic Oslo Accords, a milestone in the ever-winding road to peace in the Middle East.

The movie is an adaptation of J.T. Rogers’s Tony-winning play of the same name, which centers on the Norweigan couple who brought representatives from Israel and Palestine together for the back-channel meetings that would eventually culminate in the signing of the Oslo Accords, the first formal mutual recognition between Israel and the Plo.

As with any based-on-a-true-story flick, the subjects’ lives are much fuller than a two-hour narrative can afford to flesh out. Before you stream “Oslo,” read up on some of the real people behind the historical drama.

Getty Images...

White House news footage at the end of Oslo shows Bill Clinton witnessing the 1993 Rose Garden handshake of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. That moment marked a landmark agreement in which the two implacable adversaries recognized each other’s legitimacy for the first time. The solemn emotional impact of the image is fueled by the knowledge that Rabin would be assassinated two years later by an Israeli extremist, and despite ongoing peace talks, that historic accord would be shattered as violence erupted again in 2000 with the Second Intifada. Recent headlines about the humanitarian ...

White House news footage at the end of Oslo shows Bill Clinton witnessing the 1993 Rose Garden handshake of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. That moment marked a landmark agreement in which the two implacable adversaries recognized each other’s legitimacy for the first time. The solemn emotional impact of the image is fueled by the knowledge that Rabin would be assassinated two years later by an Israeli extremist, and despite ongoing peace talks, that historic accord would be shattered as violence erupted again in 2000 with the Second Intifada. Recent headlines about the humanitarian ...

This rigorous and nailbiting documentary examines the US president’s failure to facilitate an agreement between Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s

In the last days of his presidency Bill Clinton took a call from the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. “You are a great man,” Arafat told him. Clinton replied angrily: “I’m not a great man. I’m a failure. And you made me a failure.” Dror Moreh’s gripping, intellectually vigorous documentary is the story of that failure: the collapse of the peace deal brokered by the US between the Palestinians and Israelis. It’s a blow-by-blow account in measured – but nailbiting – detail, told by the American diplomats in charge of the high-stakes negotiations. You could imagine John le Carré basing a character on one of these polite, ferociously bright people.

When Clinton took office in January 1993, the Middle East was not high on his agenda, but since...

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.

Often compared to Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman has developed during the years in both his short and feature films, a very original cinematic language, using rather few words and lots of sense of humour to observe and comment on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. The 2002 “Divine Intervention” is the film that fine tunes his trademark style, initiated in “Chronicle of a Disappearance” (1996) and that will evolve in “The Time That Remains” (2009) – a film based in part on his father’s diaries – and in his latest “It Must Be Heaven” (2019) a work about, in the director’s own words, the “Palestinisation of the Globe”. “Divine Intervention” is also the work that brought Suleiman under the international spotlight as it was nominated for the Palme d’Or award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and was also considered for the 2003 Academy Awards. Unfortunately, in a twist of fate that ironically...

Larry King, who had a legendary six-decade career on TV and radio and pioneered the live interview, died on Saturday at age 87, according to a statement from his Ora Media company.

King, who had a 25-year run hosting CNN’s “Larry King Live,” died at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized last month with Covid-19 and had been treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit. “For 63 years and across the platforms of radio, television and digital media, Larry’s many thousands of interviews, awards, and global acclaim stand as a testament to his unique and lasting talent as a broadcaster,” Ora Media said in a statement.

The suspender-clad broadcaster first rose to fame on radio before CNN hired him in 1985 to host a nightly interview show that won him widespread acclaim, high ratings and two Peabody Awards. At its peak in 1998, the show averaged 1.64 million viewers.

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.

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,...

After premiering at the 2019 Telluride Film Festival and screening at the Hamptons, Chicago, AFI Fest, and more, Dror Moreh’s insightful documentary “The Human Factor” is finally gearing up for a wide release, care of Sony Pictures Classics. Per the film’s official synopsis, it documents “the untold, behind-the-scenes story of the United States’ 30-year effort to secure peace in the Middle East, told from the perspective of the American negotiators.” Filmmaker Moreh previously helmed the 2012 Oscar nominee “The Gatekeepers,” which followed the former leaders of Israeli security agency Shin Bet.

When the film was preparing for its 2019 Doc NYC premiere, IndieWire’s own Anne Thompson wrote that it was an “intelligent examination of the peace process in the Middle East through the lens of six wily, strategically sensitive negotiators who led the diplomatic talks over 25 years with a series of U.S., Israel, and Palestine leaders.” The film boasts...

“They Planted Strange Trees,” the new documentary by Hind Shoufani, the Middle East-based Palestinian-American director and poet from the leftist Levantine diaspora, will depict her return to Galilee, after 20 years of absence and her parents’ death, to embrace the vibrant family and community she seeks in her ancestral Christian Arab land.

Ossama Bawardi of leading Jordanian and Palestinian production house Philistine Films is producing. The non-fiction film is about to head into post-production.

Shoufani told Variety at the El Gouna Film Festival that “They Planted Strange Trees,” “Organically weaves together the lives of 14 Arab Christians in Galilee. The ensemble of characters interact with each other, extended communities, and the camera documenting their everyday lives.”

The film is an investigative curious trip through many towns, starting in Mi’ilya, then onto the destroyed Palestinian villages of Iqrith/Biriim, the Christian villages of Fassuta/Tarsheeha, and then the complex cities of Haifa and Nazareth.

Ted Koppel hasn’t anchored ABC’s “Nightline” since 2005. Yet he’s had a new influence on the late-night news program since last week.

“Nightline” has, at least for now, returned to the format that brought it critical renown and TV fame. Since last Monday, the show has spent its regular late-night half hour delving into the world’s coronavirus crisis. And, starting tomorrow night, it will for a time return to its original perch, airing right after late local news, just like Koppel did. Repeats of late-night mainstay “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will start after midnight.

“We are just leaning more heavily into our roots,” says Byron Pitts, who co-anchors the program with Juju Chang.

On one recent night’s broadcast, ABC News foreign correspondent James Longman offered viewers a you-are-there look at his efforts to get out of Italy before the country was locked down, then checked himself in to an Airbnb to recover.

Jim Lehrer, the longtime anchor of “PBS NewsHour,” died Thursday, the network confirms. He was 85.

Lehrer rose to prominence in the 1970s anchoring “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report” with colleague Robert MacNeil. The program was renamed “PBS NewsHour” in 2009. Lehrer filled the anchor role for nearly four decades.

“It is with great sadness that I share the news that co-founder and longtime anchor of the ‘PBS NewsHour’ Jim Lehrer died today, Thursday, January 23, 2020, peacefully in his sleep at home,” Judy Woodruff, Lehrer’s colleague and current “PBS NewsHour” anchor, wrote in a statement.

“I’m heartbroken at the loss of someone who was central to my professional life, a mentor to me and someone whose friendship I’ve cherished for decades,” Woodruff added. “I’ve looked up to him as the standard for fair, probing and thoughtful journalism and I know countless others who feel the same way.”

Lehrer, born May...

There are so many things that I remember about living in Israel between the years of 1993-1994: the smell of salt water mixed with fresh raw fish in the ancient port of Jaffa, weekend hikes in Ein Gedi, the crackle and hiss of falafel balls frying in vats of piping hot oil in the street food stands of Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem.

But what I remember most is this: there was hope. It was tangible this hope, spread wide and spanning the length of the entire country, stretching itself like a gentle, soft yawn all the way across the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, to our families back home in the United States.

Peace was on the horizon.

On September 13, 1993, Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, stood on either side of President Bill Clinton and shook hands on the White House Lawn.

San Sebastian — Rouge International co-founder Nadia Turincev, whose credits included the Oscar-nominated “The Insult,” “Raw” and “Mimosas,” has teamed with Omar El Kadi, head of acquisitions and sales, Emea, at Lebanon’s Mc Distribution, to launch Easy Riders Films, a new Paris-based production company.

If Easy Riders Films first titles are anything to go by – Latin American co-production “Perros,” 1941 Lebanon-set comedy “The Fifteen,” political romantic drama series “L’Âge d’Or,” Easy Riders looks set to pursue the adventurous, unconventional production line which has come to distinguish Turincev.

At the same time she and El Kadi have linked from the get-go with prestigious production partners around the globe and are backing projects put through the most illustrious of development programs.

“Perros,” for example, is directed by Cannes Cinéfondation Résidence 2019 winner Vinko Tomičić, is also produced by Chile’s Jirafa Films, behind Christopher Murray’s “The Blind Christ” and Alicia Scherson’s “Il Futuro,...

In a passionately divided democracy, the hate-filled words of politicians, cultural influencers and the right-wing media incite an extreme nationalist to commit murder. Although this plot summary sounds as if could be ripped from recent U.S. headlines, “Incitement” is actually a provocative drama from Israeli helmer Yaron Zilberman (“A Late Quartet”), which looks at what inspired the devoutly Orthodox law student Yigal Amir to kill Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination took place on Nov. 4, 1995, as Rabin was trying to orchestrate a comprehensive peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians that involved giving up territory controled by Israel since the Six Day War, and his death effectively derailed the prospect of peace.

While “Incitement” is a compelling watch, with archival footage neatly woven in, and offers a salutary warning about how easily democracies are endangered, this psychological profile of a political assassin nevertheless falls into a kind of moral trap.

There’s a certain group of documentary-loving policy wonks who’ll be clamoring for “The Human Factor,” with its nostalgic spotlight on a time when the U.S. understood the value of international diplomacy (how quaint that now sounds!). For director Dror Moreh, making a film about the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations was a natural follow-up to his well-received “The Gatekeepers,” in which Israeli security agents spoke of their work and Moreh exposed conflicting rationales and troubling moral relativity. His latest documentary, while potentially more sellable, is far more problematic, on multiple fronts.

First, there’s his decision to see the conflict only through the eyes of six negotiators for the Americans, several of whom admit to a latent Israeli bias. Then there’s the problematic way Yasser Arafat is presented, depicted as usual as petulant and childish, with no recognition that his insistence on being treated with respect was at...

“Nothing is moving, everything is destroyed.

It’s our land, yet it isn’t. What a strange country.”

In his 2002 film “Ticket to Jersusalem”, Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi portrays the daily routine of a film projectionist who travels back and forth between his home in the Palestinian refugee camps to the West Bank and Jerusalem. However, labeling his work as routine is in many ways misleading, as the checkpoints at the border as well as the long periods of waiting have taken their toll on the man. Crossing another border, namely between fact and fiction, the film also shows the real situation as the actors and crew are within people waiting to be allowed to pass, left alone with the excruciating observation of how divided their land is. The atmosphere in these scenes is one of helplessness, of exhaustion and the growing sensation matters will only get worse before there is any sign of improvement.

Julia Bacha’s militant documentary Naila and the Uprising is by turns startling and dismaying as it traces the central role Palestinian women played in the First Intifada of the late 1980s. Integrating animated scenes with interviews and archive footage, it paints an indelible picture of how, with many men deported or arrested, women stepped into the arena of political and social organizing, only to be told their role was over when Yasser Arafat returned from exile to form the Palestinian Authority in 1994 with a crew of all-male leaders.

It’s a painful story, but also an illuminating one that is...

If you have a theater fan in your life who has been extra hyped these days, it’s likely because the 2017 Tony Awards are nearly here.

The Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre (as the Tonys are officially known) recognize the highest honor in U.S. theater — the equivalent of television’s Emmys or the film industry’s Oscars.

With no Hamilton-sized hit this year, the race in the top categories has been pretty wide open and hard to predict — with only Bette Midler’s turn in the revival of Hello, Dolly! a lock for the best actress in a musical prize.

Shimon Peres, former Israeli president and winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, died Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post reports. He was 93. After suffering a massive stroke on September 13, Peres, the last surviving member of Israel’s founding fathers, suffered severe organ failure on Tuesday. He also suffered irreversible brain damage a a result of the stroke. Peres, who held many offices in the Israeli government including prime minister, defense minister and foreign minister, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Plo chairman Yasser Arafat, for their work creating the Oslo Accords peace deal. Also...

Minister for Culture and Sport Miri Regev threatened to cut off subsidies if the documentary was not pulled.

In a conflict that some are already calling The Clash of the Regevs, the new Minister for Culture and Sport, Miri Regev, told the director of the Jerusalem Film Festival, Noa Regev (no relation) that she will cut off all of the event’s subsidies unless a documentary entitled Beyond the Fear is taken off the program.

Miri Regev, a former Army censor and a leader of the victorious Likud party which swept recent elections, had already created furor in the media when she first announced that she will not hesitate to clamp down any attempt by artists of any kind to slander the present Israeli policies. Harshly criticized after she threatened to deprive an Arab theatre troupe of all financial assistance because it refused to take its productions on tour through the West Bank territories (that conflict was settled...

This belated sequel sags despite the gags but will still be the best news Ron Burgundy's fans have had for a decade

Nearly a decade on from the original Anchorman film, affection for Will Ferrell's hapless newscaster Ron Burgundy has reached thermonuclear levels; it's hardly surprising, therefore, that this belated sequel is arriving on a wave of Burgundy-mania, where every marketing opportunity (ice-cream, trailer release, talk-show appearance, book tie-in) is treated as a major news event. In this Burgundy has its equivalent in the UK in Alan Partridge – as well as, of course, using its mocking take on broadcast-industry second-raters as a vehicle for broader social satire.

Well, lovers of Ron Burgundy – and I don't mean the kind that revs his engines – will find a lot to enjoy here. The Legend Continues picks up several years later with Burgundy co-anchoring with wife Veronica (Christina Applegate); a vacancy on the...

Journalist and documentary film-maker whose investigations brought him into conflict with police and government

The Scottish documentary film-maker Brian Barr, who has died aged 70 from cancer, was one of those journalists for whom integrity was more important than self-promotion or material reward. In 1986, Brian helped reveal one of Britain's greatest postwar security scandals, when he and the investigative journalist Duncan Campbell exposed the existence of a £500m spy satellite which the government had somehow omitted to mention to parliament – Project Zircon. Working on a tipoff, they confirmed the existence of the project by putting a surprise question, during a filmed interview, to a visibly shocked government scientist, Professor Sir Ronald Mason.

Afterwards, special branch officers raided the Glasgow headquarters of BBC Scotland in the middle of the night and seized all film related to the programme, which had been made for the Secret Society series. This ignited one of the...

Back in June, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues director Adam McKay revealed to us exclusively that he wants to make two different versions of his sequel, one rated PG-13 and the other rated R. The director revealed once again that he is hoping to release two separate cuts, with the alternate release containing over 250 new jokes.

The quote comes from the director's Empire Magazine breakdown of the recent trailer that was released earlier this week. Take a look at key moments from the video, along with the filmmaker's comments. The information about two separate versions is found underneath the seventh photo.

Good Evening, I'm Richard Whtimore

The trailer begins with a clip from an actual news broadcast - but not just any news broadcast. This is Richard Whitmore, former BBC anchor. Why start with a nod to Auntie Beeb?

"It starts off legitimate and then falls apart. That's the idea.

Controversial politician at the heart of power in Italy who was prime minister seven times

Giulio Andreotti, who has died aged 94, was the ultimate insider of Italian political life. For half a century he was at the heart of power. His tenure at the highest echelons of government was unequalled in Europe. From the early 1960s to the early 90s, he was – almost uninterruptedly – either prime minister or a senior minister. Andreotti was in all but six of the 45 governments that ran from May 1947 to April 1992, led seven of them and, at various times, was the minister of defence, foreign affairs (five times), finance, treasury, and interior. He held the post of prime minister for longer than any other postwar Italian politician except Silvio Berlusconi, yet he never led the Christian Democratic party.

His tenacity in remaining at the centre of affairs became a source of fascination in itself. Just...

Fox News Channel host Geraldo Rivera appeared on Fox & Friends on Friday where he struggled to defend the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, as well as the decision by President Barack Obama to stand beneath his portrait during a joint press conference with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Thursday. Rivera attempted to explain to the incredulous Fox hosts that Arafat, implicated in scores of terrorist acts, was the Palestinian equivalent of George Washington.

Hemet, Calif. — The public face for the anti-Muslim film inflaming the Middle East is not the filmmaker, but an insurance agent and Vietnam War veteran whose unabashed and outspoken hatred of radical Muslims has drawn the attention of civil libertarians, who say he's a hate monger.

With the Coptic Christian filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in hiding, film promoter Steve Klein has taken center stage in the unfolding international drama. He's given a stream of interviews about the film and the man he says he knew only as Sam Bacile, and is using the attention to talk about his own political views.

Nakoula, who used Bacile spelled multiple ways as a pseudonym, contacted Klein months ago for advice about the limits of American free speech and asked for help vetting the movie's script, Klein said in an interview with The Associated Press. The filmmaker asked the 61-year-old grandfather if he would...

Sacha Baron Cohen's film joins Team America and The Producers in depicting despots as one-dimensional buffoons. But why are we obsessed with satirising tyrants – and is it right to find them funny?

Ever since His Excellency Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen, self-styled beloved oppressor and chief ophthalmologist of the People's Republic of Wadiya, inadvertently spilled Kim Jong-il's ashes over Ryan Seacrest's tux outside the Oscars, the world has had to deal with some pretty awkward questions.

What is it with our obsession with satirising dictators? Was Aristotle correct when he suggested that the right genre for dramatising bad men is comedy not tragedy, or should it be beneath us to find power-crazed nutjobs funny? Why can't Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Aladeen (slogan: "Death To The West!") in the upcoming movie The Dictator, find some tougher targets? If it was wrong of the Sun to mock Roy Hodgson for his inability to pronounce rs,...

Mika Brzezinski revealed that she once saw Jimmy Carter in nothing but a Speedo in her appearance on "Letterman" on Tuesday night.

The "Morning Joe" co-host recounted her colorful childhood as the daughter of Carter's national security advisor. Brzezinski jokingly called her family the "Polish hillbillies of Washington."

She described sitting in on a secret meeting between her parents and Yasser Arafat in her early teens, and having heads of state over for dinner.

"You got to know Jimmy Carter?" Letterman asked.

"I did. I... I... I saw him in a Speedo," Brzezinski said, looking embarrassed at the admission. "Wow, I don't know why I just said that. I'm a little nervous."

She explained that it happened at Camp David. She also told Letterman that one of her brothers grew up to be a Republican, so “he didn't turn out so well."...

Former colleagues of 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace are sharing their memories of the famed late journalist, who passed away on Saturday night at 93. Longtime colleague Morley Safer, who has co-hosted the legendary news program with Wallace since the early ’70s, put together a video tribute to his deceased partner.

The video features dozens of clips of Wallace doing what he did best: interviewing the most notable names of the 20th century, including figures from the White House to Hollywood. Safer offers a glimpse into Wallace’s list of interview subjects: Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, the Reagans,...