Budrus

Ayed Morrar, an unlikely community organiser, unites Palestinians from all political factions with Israelis and others from around the world to save his village – and its treasured olive trees – from destruction by Israel’s separation barrier.

Amanda Palmer and Julia Bacha

Victory seems improbable until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly moves to the front lines.

Struggling side by side, father and daughter unleashed an inspiring movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today.

An action-filled documentary chronicling this movement from its infancy, Budrus shines a light on people who choose nonviolence to confront a threat. 

The movie is directed by award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha (Control Room, Encounter Point).

Bacha joins Amanda Palmer, Al Jazeera’s head of entertainment, and the FPS audience for a refreshingly optimistic Q&A.

Yuen Woo-ping

True Legend

From Hong Kong to Hollywood, there is one person more than any other responsible for the way martial arts have been depicted in modern movies.

He is the Chinese choreographer and director Yuen Woo-ping, a graduate of the famous Peking Opera School. 

Back in the 1970s, Woo-ping helped launch the career of fellow Peking Opera alumnus Jackie Chan, and through the years he has made an indelible mark on the international action film.

Besides a treasure trove of Hong Kong classics, he has also choreographed action for The Matrix, the Kill Bill films and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Woo-ping recently directed his first feature since the mid-1990s. His kung-tastic True Legend tells the folk tale of Beggar Su, a martial arts hero from the days of the Chinese Qing Dynasty. 

Woo-ping talks to FPS about his return to directing, and the differences between working in Asia and in the West.

Romanian Roundup

Tales from the Golden Age

After the 1989 execution of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania experienced at least a decade of economic depression and ever-deepening corruption.

But out of this bleakness emerged the cinematic triumph of the Romanian New Wave.

Beginning in 2005 with the Cannes Un Certain Regard win for Cristi Puiu’s The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu and cemented with Cristian Mungiu’s 2007 Cannes top prize for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Romania has given us some of the most profound – and funny – cinema in Europe today.

A new batch of films shows this wave is maturing and strengthening. Mungiu recently showed his mellower side with an anthology of communist-era urban legends, Tales From the Golden Age, which proves how black humour kept people going through the darkest times.

In If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, director Florin Serban tells a contemporary story of troubled youth, through the children left by parents forced to seek work in Europe. 

Constantin Popescu’s The Portrait Of The Fighter as a Young Man, a film about the anti-communist partisans who fought the regime until the 1950s, is also about how betrayal is still an issue in the country today.

Finally, Cristi Puiu’s new feature, Aurora, features a man wandering aimlessly through Bucharest in a three-hour mediation on the nature of love, marriage and divorce.

While these films cover different periods in Romania’s 20th century history, they all ask deep questions about what makes Romania the country it is today. FPS talks to the filmmakers and previews the New Wave’s newest.

This episode of The Fabulous Picture Show can be seen from Thursday, May 13, at the following times GMT: Thursday: 0600; Friday: 0030 and 0830; Saturday: 1130 and 2330; Sunday: 2130; Monday: 1430; Tuesday: 1230 and 1930; Thursday: 0030.