Audiences Want to See Documentaries About Gaza, Israel, and Palestine — Why Are Distributors Still Scared?

When the Oscar-nominated drama “The Voice of Hind Rajab” about a Palestinian girl trapped under Israeli military fire began playing at New York City’s Film Forum theater in late 2025, screening at the same time at the theater was documentary “Holding Liat.” That film, which won the top Berlin doc prize a year after “No Other Land” did the same, profiled one Israeli family’s efforts to recover their kidnapped daughter after being taken in the October 7 attacks.

These two films were not in opposition to each other; rather, they were in conversation with one another. The movies weren’t consciously programmed side-by-side, but the platforming of each of them did not spark mass protests outside the venue or outrage that the perspective of one group was given equal footing with another.

“This film is about this family, and it’s not to say that this is the penultimate story about what’s happening in this moment,” Lance Kramer, co-director of “Holding Liat,” told IndieWire. “This is one story that needs to live in a constellation of many stories made by Palestinian filmmakers, made by other Jewish filmmakers, made by all kinds of people. We always said that, and we were always supportive of that. But it was hard for those platforms to see or believe that.”

Kramer believes that not only is it not a detriment for these movies to screen alongside one another, it may be necessary to get all sorts of stories about the crisis in Gaza to the screen at a moment when distributors haven’t been willing to step up and have that conversation.

“Hind Rajab” was released by WILLA and Watermelon Pictures, an upstart distributor that has specialized in sharing Palestinian-led stories, seizing on an opportunity in the market to release these films that others won’t. And “Holding Liat” was self-distributed, released into theaters without the aid of a proper distributor and marketing push. Absent that dedicated marketing and even suppression of these stories, creating grassroots conversations between films of several different perspectives will be key to getting them to reach an audience.

‘Holding Liat’

“That became a model for others to follow. But then there were other theaters and other markets where they wouldn’t even watch the film,” Kramer said. “The more common thing is people would say, ‘I love the film, but I’m scared what would happen if we played it.’ Usually that fear was based off one or two people in the community they were really scared of, and that could be the difference between offering the film up to the whole community.”

Setting aside the usual post-Covid difficulties of getting any documentaries to succeed at the box office, movies specifically about Israel and Palestine post-October 7 are especially facing a gatekeeper problem. The reasons may seem obvious: this is too polarizing a subject, especially in Hollywood, and people want escapism, not a harsh dose of reality, when they buy a movie ticket. Those apprehensions naturally got worse after October 7.

But there’s something more going on beyond the pushback political films like “Ask E. Jean” have faced in getting exposure. “Hind Rajab” after its Oscar nomination eventually landed a home on Hulu, but many of Watermelon’s other titles have not been released via streamers, and they’ve even faced the same ad suppression on social media that movies like “Musk” reportedly dealt with. “Holding Liat,” which just went live on digital earlier this month, is only being released as a TVOD rental, again without any other streamer backing it.

“We genuinely feel the industry has not caught up with the audience,” Watermelon Pictures co-founder Hamza Ali told IndieWire. “There is an appetite for a lot of these films. We’re demonstrating it. But we’re still not getting major streamers to come on for a lot of our films. I’m not going to name names, but the one exception was ‘The Voice of ‘Hind Rajab,’ which was nominated for an Academy Award, and to be quite honest, that’s what it took to get it placed was a nomination. Outside of that, we’re just not seeing it. I don’t know the answer. They really need to get with the program and get caught up.”

The Oscar-winning “No Other Land” and this month’s “NAZA” are the most high-profile examples of the challenges these movies face. The movies from filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor have each been self-distributed, partnering with independent distribution consultant Michael Tuckman on the targeted rollout, and after deciding against a distributor for “No Other Land,” “NAZA” immediately cut out the middleman and went straight to an indie release, with newspaper The Guardian planning to put it online in November for as swift a release as possible. “No Other Land” wound up making $3.6 million worldwide, and “NAZA” has already surpassed half a million dollars domestically after just two weekends in which it has expanded to only a handful of theaters.

‘American Doctor’

Other docs have found their audience. Watermelon’s “American Doctor” from this year has made over half a million from just a domestic release, all from art houses and independent venues. “Holding Liat” has only made $80K, but the film has screened in over 70 festivals, 25 countries, and 40 U.S. cities, not including community and campus screenings. “Coexistence, My Ass” about an Israeli comedian and which was also self-released with Tuckman’s help, made $37K in just a couple of weeks in theaters.

It could be that with numbers like that, distributors aren’t seeing the upside that can come with the risks, but the question is, what risks? What are they really afraid of?

“I never encountered a single thing that merits that fear,” Kramer said. “What I saw was people going to a movie theater and watching a movie that they cared deeply about, or didn’t know much about. There was one protest that happened out of the 300+ screenings. Even then, I talked to the protesters, there was a dialogue. It was the theater’s right to play the film and the protesters’ right to protest the film. That’s what happens in a democracy. The fears that people expressed to us in our experience never materialized. It was an example of people who do have these forms of gatekeeping responsibility and power are working through some of their own insecurities and personal fears and not trusting that they can give the audience the chance to do that for themselves. I think the audience really suffers when that happens.”

Kramer said during the filming of “Holding Liat,” all the distributors they spoke with “were looking for some difficult-to-articulate balance” in terms of the politics and human elements of the story. They wanted to know how the movie would end and what their angle was, all while Liat was still in captivity, and eventually the filmmakers stopped those conversations. When the film premiered in Berlin, the conversations started again but didn’t go any different.

“There were people telling us no one will ever see the film, or if you play this film all these bad things will happen,” Kramer said. “We were told by one publicist, the best thing we could hope for was to keep our heads down and be as low-profile as possible and not get canceled.”

Brandon Kramer and Lance Kramer

“The contradiction that we experienced was that these companies kept telling us it’s too divisive, it’s too polarized, and what we were experiencing in over 100 of them was the exact opposite,” co-director Brandon Kramer added. “They weren’t fueled by divisiveness, they were exhausted. They want opportunities to experience films from different perspectives.”

Theaters, not just distributors, are similarly feeling apprehensive. They too feel that by even programming a film it gives the perception of a political stance, and they don’t want to take that risk without knowing if the intended audience will show up. Watermelon Pictures then is doing added grassroots promotion, identifying local support groups, and not leaving that work up to the theaters themselves.

“I have compassion for cinemas because it’s about survival at this point for them in terms of programming,” said Watermelon’s head of distribution Justin DiPietro. “Theaters that would be very adventurous with their programming pre-pandemic, now they have to be careful with what they’re putting on screen in bringing in revenue. It’s much easier to put an extra screen of ‘Spider-Man’ than it is to take a risk on a really good documentary.” He adds that people may feel they can wait to see a film on streaming, but that’s not always the case with movies about Gaza.

Richard Lorber, CEO of art house distributor Kino Lorber, pushed back on the notion that distributors aren’t willing to give these films a home. While the major streamers may not have the same appetite, he believes there are other indies like his own that have a “commitment and passion to address issues of the day.” Despite widespread belief that “No Other Land” didn’t have any distributors interested, Lorber said Kino put in an aggressive bid to release the film before it went the self-distribution route. The company also just released the Palestinian doc “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” and is even releasing the narrative drama “Yes” from an Israeli filmmaker.

‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’

Lorber, though, has seen how the “NAZA” team has benefited from a self-distribution strategy, allowing them to be nimble and unencumbered about where they play in a way that other traditional distributors can’t, and that’s shaped how he and others have thought about getting these films out with urgency. Kino did just that with “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” riding the film’s momentum to an Oscar win. Watermelon also moved up their release date for a documentary called “The Encampments” by several months when its protagonist was detained by ICE and made headlines. And the success that “NAZA” has had in a short time can and should inspire other Gaza docs to use it as a test case, but not everyone can have the same success with self-distribution.

“There are a lot of there are other filmmakers that might try to pursue that same path and might come up empty-handed or find the outcome very disappointing, not just financially, but in terms of reaching the audiences they want beyond the echo chamber of a small cohort of audiences,” Lorber said. “The do-it-yourself, indie filmmakers, we’re learning for them because they’re doing some smart things. They need us, but we also need them.”