Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman chronicle the student movement for Palestine through the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University.
With documentaries exploring very recent events, filmmakers can source all the relevant footage and interviews needed in a short period of time. But conventional wisdom suggests that the longer you spend grappling with your subject, the greater the delivery of your message. That said, the urgency of an ongoing issue can far outweigh the merits of sticking to standard journalistic practices.
A faster turnaround was necessary for Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman’s The Encampments, which arrives barely a year after the specific student protests that it covers. The film’s main focus is the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University’s lawn in April 2024, pressuring the New York City university to divest from companies manufacturing weapons used by Israel that target and kill Palestinians – two of the main organising groups were Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.
This engrossing documentary tracks organisers at Columbia as they’re thrust into the spotlight during their fight for divestment, facing congressional pressure, abuse from Zionist counter-protestors and, eventually, violent police repression, though not before they’ve helped to encourage a wave of further encampments at other universities. Presenting a far more clarifying and empathetic document of the peaceful protesters’ activities and rationale than was ever permitted during the media firestorm that ensued, The Encampments proves essential as an exposé on wild distortion of messaging and the betrayal of institutions’ promoted values.
The film bears no signs of being a rushed job. But if the directors had sat on it for longer, the barely 80-minute feature would likely have greatly expanded in length thanks to still-unfolding developments. Among the events laid out in addendums before the end credits is that in March 2025, ICE agents, acting under orders of the Department of Homeland Security and presenting no warrant, abducted Mahmoud Khalil from his New York home, putting him into immediate deportation proceedings despite Khalil being a permanent US resident with no criminal charges.
An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, Khalil is one of the more frequent and warmly engaging on-camera presences in The Encampments, having been a lead negotiator in the Columbia protests. At time of writing, Khalil is still in detention but getting op-eds out regarding the breakneck erosion of his rights. By the time this review runs, his fate as an American resident could still be undetermined as the Trump administration continues attacking civil rights, the groundwork having been laid by the Biden administration’s encouragement of crackdown on peaceful protests against genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Yet there is hope: Gazan journalist Bisan Owda is among the talking heads, given appropriate space in the film’s moving closing moments to reflect on the rippling global awakening concerning freedom for the Palestinian people; on the importance of feeling, regardless of how gradually, that they are not alone.
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