The majority of films featured in the 2007 Arab Film Festival are from Palestine, a country torn and destroyed by hatred. It was hard to sit through hours of such pain and suffering.

In 2002, Jenin Jenin by filmmaker Mohammed Bakri was featured at the International Documentary Filmfestival (IDFA) in Amsterdam. Mohammed Bakri has followed this film with Since You Left a documentary that was premiered for the first time in California at the Arab Film Festival.

Since You Left takes viewers to the grave of Emil Habibi, Mohammed Bakri’s former mentor, as Mohammed describes what has happened in his life and in Palestine as a whole since the death of Habibi.

It is a film that starts with the hope of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. As we follow Bakri’s life through news clippings and personal footage we find the hope slowly diminishes.

Viewers will find themselves feeling the pain of Bakri as he fights for peace in his country. At one point in this touching film Bakri admits he would rather his children not stay in Palestine. He would rather they leave and have a better life. It is at this point, the viewer feels that Bakri has given up hope for peace in Palestine.

The only hope the audience can see in this film is by witnessing the relationship between Bakri and his Jewish lawyer. It seems if they can empathize with each other then maybe the rest of the country could possible get to that point also.

After Since you Left, the next film was The Roof which continued our Palestinian theme. The Roof dramatizes the mundane lives of one Palestinian family living in a partially finished home that they were forced to occupy after they couldn’t flee the country in 1948.

Most of the film was slow, and the emphasis on the mundane was annoying at times. It was hard for me to understand what the filmmaker was trying to say in this short documentary. However, one message was clearly acknowledged: Jaffa is a city that has never seen peace. Ironically the city of Jaffa means "beautiful," and yet it has been at the center of ugly conflicts for decades.

The film takes the audience from Palestine to the United States and back. The filmmaker, Tariq Nasir tells the story of his family, the Nasir family. A most dramatic moment is when the family is forced to take shelter in the basement of a nearby hospital during the Israeli-Egyptian Six-Day war.

With the war raging outside the door, his mother goes into labor with her fourth child. His uncle delivers the baby in the dark. Amazingly, the entire family survived but had to leave Palestine forever.

Although the pain was difficult to watch at times, the films were educational and informative. One wonders if this was a cathartic work on the part of the filmmakers.

Or perhaps, by confronting the audience with these most discouraging images, the directors are daring one last time to dream the impossible: that the world’s eyes would be opened to the desperate need for peace in the Palestinian region.