Emad Burnat

January 1, 1971

Palestine

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. On February 19, 2013, he and his family were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport, when customs officials refused to believe his reason for entering American soil. “Although this has been an unpleasant experience, it is a daily occurrence for us Palestinians, every day, throughout the West Bank. There are more than 500 Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and other obstacles to movement in our territory , and none of us were spared from the experience my family and I went through yesterday."...