Podium (You Have Three Minutes)

In Progress

Imagine, you have three minutes to exercise your right to speak and assert your right to exist.

Since Israel was established and its parliament — the Knesset — first convened, Palestinian lawmakers have served alongside Jewish ones.

There’s MK Bishara who liked to quote Immanuel Kant and MK Zahalka who preferred quoting Walter Benjamin. There’s MK Tibi who likes to correct his Jewish colleagues’ poor grammar and poorer etiquette. There’s MK Touma Suleiman, a Feminist activist who calls out anyone for sexist misconduct — regardless of nationality or religion. And there’s MK Ziad who in a famous speech reached out his hand as if he were cupping something — decrying the fact that the Jewish majority has the Arab minority by the balls.

Be they poets, philosophers, doctors or lawyers, communists, liberals, nationalists or islamists — every Palestinian lawmaker steps onto the Knesset podium with pain, frustration, anger and hope and delivers speeches with truth in their hearts. True, they’re also politicians and as such should be taken with a grain of salt as they go about the performative act of “speeching” — be it provocative, poignant, polarizing, pacifying, or prophetic.

Now imagine a collection of 3-minute speeches curated from thousands delivered at the podium from 1948 until today — like a relay race across the generations and against the political odds — what would we hear? A righteous appeal for a rightful place at the table of sovereignty and self-determination — rather than the carrot, the stick, and the ethnocratic crumbs begrudgingly swept off of it by their colonizers.

Yet most of these speeches fall on deaf ears. Because there’s another character in this film — the Jewish MKs. Like the Jewish public at large — they ignore and yell, rebuke and curse, censor and outlaw — but rarely do they listen. Nevertheless, the podium is a site of eloquent resistance.

The Filmmakers

Rachel Leah Jones is an Emmy® Award-winning nonfiction filmmaker whose trajectory in the field — from producer to director to editor to writer — has spanned three decades and three continents. Her work, awarded by NATAS, APSA and SIMA among others, has also been nominated for the PGA Awards, the IDA Awards, selected by the European Film Academy, honored by Cinema Eye, and shortlisted for the Oscars. A three-time Sundance Festival and Institute alumna, her critically-acclaimed films — COEXISTENCE, MY ASS! (2025), ADVOCATE (2019); GYPSY DAVY (2012); ASHKENAZ (2007); 500 DUNAM ON THE MOON (2002) — have screened in festivals worldwide such as IDFA, True/False, Visions du Reel, Sheffield, CPH:DOX, DocNYC, Hotdocs, TIDF and aired on dozens of channels including ARTE’s Grand Format, PBS’s POV; BBC Storyville; ARD Germany; France 2; RTS Switzerland; Channel 8 Israel; YLE Finland; DR Denmark; SVT Sweden; 2M Morocco; Radio Canada; Al Jazeera’s Witness, and HBO Latin America (among others). In addition to maintaining a prolific career as an activist-artist, Jones, a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has collaborated extensively with other filmmakers and worked as a story consultant, directing mentor, and film curator.

Philippe Bellaïche is an Emmy® Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose trajectory in the field — from DP to producer to director — has spanned three decades and four continents. His work, awarded by NATAS, APSA and SIMA among others, has also been nominated for the PGA Awards, the IDA Awards, selected by the European Film Academy, honored by Cinema Eye, and shortlisted for the Oscars. A five-time Sundance Festival and Institute alumnus whose work has screened at leading festivals and been broadcast worldwide, his critically acclaimed credits include ADVOCATE (2019 Sundance FF and 2021 Emmy Award for Best Documentary) and GYPSY DAVY (2012 Sundance); Amber Fares’ COEXISTENCE, MY ASS! (2025 Sundance); Avi Mograbi’s BETWEEN FENCES (2016 Berlin) Z32 (Venice), AVENGE BUT ONE OF MY TWO EYES (2005 Cannes); Arnon Goldfinger’s THE FLAT (2012 Tribeca); and Shimon Dotan’s THE SETTLERS (2016 Sundance) and HOTHOUSE (2007 Sundance), among dozens of other directors, including Nurith Aviv, Samir Jamal al-Din, Ram Loevy, and Kamal Hachkar. In addition to maintaining a prolific career as a cinematographer, Bellaiche, a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has taught in numerous film schools and is a tenured professor.