There are many misunderstandings about the decades-long fight for Palestinian rights, mostly due to misinformation, ignorance, or just bad faith, and this has obviously been exacerbated since the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The most important thing to clear up before even broaching the subject is to define our terms. Pro-Palestine does not mean pro-Hamas. Anti-Israel does not mean antisemite; one can criticize the actions of a state without targeting an ethnicity or religion. For instance, one could critique former President Joe Biden without attacking Americans. Zionist does not mean Jewish; there are perhaps more Christian Zionists in the world than there are actual Jews. Having gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at the new documentary, The Encampments.
Watermelon Pictures continues its excellent streak of political documentaries with The Encampments, a film that transports us directly to a specific place and time — Columbia University in New York, back in April 2024. Columbia students had set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” which drew the ire of conservatives and liberals alike, what with this country’s support of Israel remaining somewhat bipartisan.
The media and government focused on Columbia, but students throughout the country — indeed, the world — began to emulate the same pro-Palestinian sentiment; eventually, nearly 300 Gaza Solidarity Encampments were set up globally. The Encampments explores this short-lived phenomenon of true protest, its crushing defeat, and the ramifications leading up to this very day.
Disclose, Divest, Document
The Encampments
- Release Date
-
March 28, 2025
- Runtime
-
85 Minutes
- Producers
-
Macklemore
Columbia University students set up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment on campus, aiming to pressure the university to divest from U.S. and Israeli weapons companies.
- Main Genre
-
Documentary
- Studio
-
BreakThrough News, Watermelon Pictures
- Cinematographer
-
Craig Birchfield, Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker
- Producer
-
Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker, Munir Atalla, Matthew Belen
- Starring
-
Mahmoud Khalil, Grant Miner, Sueda Polot, Bisan Owda, Ali Abunimah, and Jamal Joseph, Rabbi Abby Stein.
Pros & Cons
- An intimate and matter-of-fact look at the student encampments in Spring of 2024.
- A quick and fact-based study of events while also a politically astute showcase of the nature of protest.
- A historically significant document with a haunting, chilling ending.
For many, the student encampments seemed to come out of nowhere, but they were actually the culmination of months spent protesting in different ways. On Oct. 9, 2023, just two days after the Hamas attacks, the groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) began organizing protests and calling on Columbia University to divest from Israel. There was little progress and not much attention. In January, Israeli students at Columbia attacked peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The protests continued, as did the demands for divestment.
What does that mean? Universities have come to operate more and more like businesses; they have “endowments,” a kind of financial portfolio consisting of different funds. Donor money, stocks and other securities, various assets like real estate, and other elements all comprise an endowment, and many corporations (and people who work for them) are involved with them. Calls for divestment have been part of climate activism, the fight to end South African apartheid, and many other protests. It can be an effective tactic, so student protestors were calling on universities to disinvest from companies that supply technology or arms to Israel, like General Electric and United Technologies.
Related
‘No Other Land’ Review: 2024’s Best Documentary Shouldn’t Be So Controversial
The incredible documentary just earned an Oscar nomination and may likely win, even though American distributors are afraid of it.
The Columbia protests began to gain attention from both the NYPD and the media on April 17 when about 70 students created “The Liberated Zone,” or the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. The Encampments shows the continued resilience of the movement; the police arrested people on East Butler Lawn, so more students gathered at West Butler. It’s a documentary about escalation and organization, showing how the protest grew and grew, leading to the occupation of Hamilton Hall, renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl who was assassinated by an IDF sniper.
One of the lead negotiators of the Columbia protests was Mahmoud Khalil, whose name has permeated the news in recent weeks as one of many people to be arrested, disappeared, or deported for no crime whatsoever, simply for pro-Palestine sentiments. Khalil is featured heavily throughout The Encampments, saying at one point in the documentary, “Through my conversations, I just felt how much the university is detached from reality. What university would want to invest in weapon manufacturing? Why would you do that? You’re concerned with education. We’re literally giving you back the university to be a moral university.”
The Literal Attack on Free Speech
Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Damascus; his grandmother walked 40 miles to Syria and gave birth along the way. While there are many Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students who participate in the protests, there are also many Jews (i.e. Jewish Voices for Peace) and people of all stripes. Khalil, speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN from Columbia, said, “Antisemitism and any other form of racism has no place on this campus or in this movement.” The Encampments puts the peaceful nature of the protest on full display. People ate food and had conversations together; songs were sung; films were shown; canvases were painted; prayer services were held. A Seder was held on the first evening of Passover.
Related
‘From Ground Zero’ Review: A Necessary Historical Document
These 22 stories from Palestinian filmmakers made in Gaza during the genocide are necessary viewing.
Zionists and the alt-right attempted to stir up as much trouble as possible, though. Students were harassed, threatened, and attacked throughout the time of the encampments, though nothing as atrocious as the infamous attacks on students at UCLA by masked thugs. The police didn’t show up to help the students as they were attacked, and campus security simply looked on. As one UCLA student says in The Encampments:
Our dean (Miguel García-Garibay) watched as the Zionists came and beat up students from the balcony of Royce Hall. No one is coming to save you. Not even the people who took an oath that they were coming to save you.
“I verified with a couple of Congresspeople and they said it’s an empty threat. We called the governor, the governor said there’s no intention of sending the National Guard,” says one student in the documentary. They were lied to. And then it happened to Columbia, but this time with the NYPD. The Encampments details the aggressive pushback against the protestors but doesn’t dwell on the violence. In fact, Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman’s film doesn’t moralize or tell you how to think; it’s more of a journalistic account than a didactic one, though it is obviously biased toward the side of free speech.
The Aftermath of ‘The Encampments’
Columbia was a sacred space in the history of protests, a significant area in the history of anti-Vietnam and civil rights demonstrations. More than 50 years later, it’s clear that this is no longer the case, and that the university (and universities in general) are now on the side of power, authority, and the state.
When the debris had cleared and the campuses were emptied, when all was said and done, 3,100 students and faculty members had been arrested. On March 8, 2025, ICE thugs took Mahmoud Khalil from his home and grabbed him away from his weeping, eight-month-pregnant wife. They put him into deportation proceedings despite the fact that he’s a permanent resident, was never charged with a crime, and never received any kind of due process. The Encampments notes all this at the end of the film, preferring to spend its runtime focusing on that spring month of 2024. While some viewers would prefer more of a follow-up, I think it ends the film on an appropriately eerie and bleak note.
Khalil’s arrest has been vocally condemned by a variety of non-partisan groups, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Faculty Association, the First Amendment Coalition, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Even rabid Zionist Bill Maher has spoken out against Khalil’s arrest, as has far-right troll Ann Coulter. Only a few days ago, on April 2, 2025, Jewish students chained themselves to gates around St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus to protest against the jailing of Khalil. Muslim or Jewish, Palestinian or Israeli, liberal or conservative — any dissent against the state and its agenda has become dangerous, no matter who you are.
Related
Exclusive: Israelism Director on the Coordinated Banning of His Documentary About Israel’s Occupation
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Like many students of the encampments, Khalil’s fate remains uncertain. With all this in mind, hearing him dream out loud at the very end of The Encampments is poignant and unforgettable. He tells the camera, “When the occupation ends, the first thing I will do, I’m definitely going back to Palestine. I have this dream of mine of jumping (…) into the sea. Then continue building a state for everyone, a state that embraces all its citizens, a state that values human lives. One day, God willing.”
The Encampments is now in theaters from Watermelon Pictures. You can find more information, theaters, and showtimes here. The film is also screening at Film at Lincon Center in New York; find showtimes and information here.
There are many misunderstandings about the decades-long fight for Palestinian rights, mostly due to misinformation, ignorance, or just bad faith, and this has obviously been exacerbated since the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The most important thing to clear up before even broaching the subject is to define our terms. Pro-Palestine does not mean pro-Hamas. Anti-Israel does not mean antisemite; one can criticize the actions of a state without targeting an ethnicity or religion. For instance, one could critique former President Joe Biden without attacking Americans. Zionist does not mean Jewish; there are perhaps more Christian Zionists in the world than there are actual Jews. Having gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at the new documentary, The Encampments.
Watermelon Pictures continues its excellent streak of political documentaries with The Encampments, a film that transports us directly to a specific place and time — Columbia University in New York, back in April 2024. Columbia students had set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” which drew the ire of conservatives and liberals alike, what with this country’s support of Israel remaining somewhat bipartisan.
The media and government focused on Columbia, but students throughout the country — indeed, the world — began to emulate the same pro-Palestinian sentiment; eventually, nearly 300 Gaza Solidarity Encampments were set up globally. The Encampments explores this short-lived phenomenon of true protest, its crushing defeat, and the ramifications leading up to this very day.
Disclose, Divest, Document
The Encampments
- Release Date
-
March 28, 2025
- Runtime
-
85 Minutes
- Producers
-
Macklemore
Columbia University students set up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment on campus, aiming to pressure the university to divest from U.S. and Israeli weapons companies.
- Main Genre
-
Documentary
- Studio
-
BreakThrough News, Watermelon Pictures
- Cinematographer
-
Craig Birchfield, Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker
- Producer
-
Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker, Munir Atalla, Matthew Belen
- Starring
-
Mahmoud Khalil, Grant Miner, Sueda Polot, Bisan Owda, Ali Abunimah, and Jamal Joseph, Rabbi Abby Stein.
Pros & Cons
- An intimate and matter-of-fact look at the student encampments in Spring of 2024.
- A quick and fact-based study of events while also a politically astute showcase of the nature of protest.
- A historically significant document with a haunting, chilling ending.
For many, the student encampments seemed to come out of nowhere, but they were actually the culmination of months spent protesting in different ways. On Oct. 9, 2023, just two days after the Hamas attacks, the groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) began organizing protests and calling on Columbia University to divest from Israel. There was little progress and not much attention. In January, Israeli students at Columbia attacked peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The protests continued, as did the demands for divestment.
What does that mean? Universities have come to operate more and more like businesses; they have “endowments,” a kind of financial portfolio consisting of different funds. Donor money, stocks and other securities, various assets like real estate, and other elements all comprise an endowment, and many corporations (and people who work for them) are involved with them. Calls for divestment have been part of climate activism, the fight to end South African apartheid, and many other protests. It can be an effective tactic, so student protestors were calling on universities to disinvest from companies that supply technology or arms to Israel, like General Electric and United Technologies.
Related
‘No Other Land’ Review: 2024’s Best Documentary Shouldn’t Be So Controversial
The incredible documentary just earned an Oscar nomination and may likely win, even though American distributors are afraid of it.
The Columbia protests began to gain attention from both the NYPD and the media on April 17 when about 70 students created “The Liberated Zone,” or the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. The Encampments shows the continued resilience of the movement; the police arrested people on East Butler Lawn, so more students gathered at West Butler. It’s a documentary about escalation and organization, showing how the protest grew and grew, leading to the occupation of Hamilton Hall, renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl who was assassinated by an IDF sniper.
One of the lead negotiators of the Columbia protests was Mahmoud Khalil, whose name has permeated the news in recent weeks as one of many people to be arrested, disappeared, or deported for no crime whatsoever, simply for pro-Palestine sentiments. Khalil is featured heavily throughout The Encampments, saying at one point in the documentary, “Through my conversations, I just felt how much the university is detached from reality. What university would want to invest in weapon manufacturing? Why would you do that? You’re concerned with education. We’re literally giving you back the university to be a moral university.”
The Literal Attack on Free Speech
Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Damascus; his grandmother walked 40 miles to Syria and gave birth along the way. While there are many Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students who participate in the protests, there are also many Jews (i.e. Jewish Voices for Peace) and people of all stripes. Khalil, speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN from Columbia, said, “Antisemitism and any other form of racism has no place on this campus or in this movement.” The Encampments puts the peaceful nature of the protest on full display. People ate food and had conversations together; songs were sung; films were shown; canvases were painted; prayer services were held. A Seder was held on the first evening of Passover.
Related
‘From Ground Zero’ Review: A Necessary Historical Document
These 22 stories from Palestinian filmmakers made in Gaza during the genocide are necessary viewing.
Zionists and the alt-right attempted to stir up as much trouble as possible, though. Students were harassed, threatened, and attacked throughout the time of the encampments, though nothing as atrocious as the infamous attacks on students at UCLA by masked thugs. The police didn’t show up to help the students as they were attacked, and campus security simply looked on. As one UCLA student says in The Encampments:
Our dean (Miguel García-Garibay) watched as the Zionists came and beat up students from the balcony of Royce Hall. No one is coming to save you. Not even the people who took an oath that they were coming to save you.
“I verified with a couple of Congresspeople and they said it’s an empty threat. We called the governor, the governor said there’s no intention of sending the National Guard,” says one student in the documentary. They were lied to. And then it happened to Columbia, but this time with the NYPD. The Encampments details the aggressive pushback against the protestors but doesn’t dwell on the violence. In fact, Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman’s film doesn’t moralize or tell you how to think; it’s more of a journalistic account than a didactic one, though it is obviously biased toward the side of free speech.
The Aftermath of ‘The Encampments’
Columbia was a sacred space in the history of protests, a significant area in the history of anti-Vietnam and civil rights demonstrations. More than 50 years later, it’s clear that this is no longer the case, and that the university (and universities in general) are now on the side of power, authority, and the state.
When the debris had cleared and the campuses were emptied, when all was said and done, 3,100 students and faculty members had been arrested. On March 8, 2025, ICE thugs took Mahmoud Khalil from his home and grabbed him away from his weeping, eight-month-pregnant wife. They put him into deportation proceedings despite the fact that he’s a permanent resident, was never charged with a crime, and never received any kind of due process. The Encampments notes all this at the end of the film, preferring to spend its runtime focusing on that spring month of 2024. While some viewers would prefer more of a follow-up, I think it ends the film on an appropriately eerie and bleak note.
Khalil’s arrest has been vocally condemned by a variety of non-partisan groups, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Faculty Association, the First Amendment Coalition, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Even rabid Zionist Bill Maher has spoken out against Khalil’s arrest, as has far-right troll Ann Coulter. Only a few days ago, on April 2, 2025, Jewish students chained themselves to gates around St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus to protest against the jailing of Khalil. Muslim or Jewish, Palestinian or Israeli, liberal or conservative — any dissent against the state and its agenda has become dangerous, no matter who you are.
Related
Exclusive: Israelism Director on the Coordinated Banning of His Documentary About Israel’s Occupation
Sam Eilertsen discusses his new film about the perception of Israel, which is controversial by definition.
Like many students of the encampments, Khalil’s fate remains uncertain. With all this in mind, hearing him dream out loud at the very end of The Encampments is poignant and unforgettable. He tells the camera, “When the occupation ends, the first thing I will do, I’m definitely going back to Palestine. I have this dream of mine of jumping (…) into the sea. Then continue building a state for everyone, a state that embraces all its citizens, a state that values human lives. One day, God willing.”
The Encampments is now in theaters from Watermelon Pictures. You can find more information, theaters, and showtimes here. The film is also screening at Film at Lincon Center in New York; find showtimes and information here.