One of the most successful Palestinian actresses of all time, Hiam Abbass, also draws a wide net around the boundaries of the term "Palestinian." Abbass, who appeared in "The Visitor" and "Munich," was also born in Israel. She has lived in Paris for the past 25 years. "When we say 'Israeli Arab,' for me, it's almost like denying this other person that exists within me that I cannot help. It's there, it's my blood, my culture, my parents, it's my history," she says of her Palestinian heritage. To Abbass, for a movie to be Palestinian, it need only have a Palestinian point of view. 

In March 2011, Academy Award-nominated director Connie Field went to Palestine with Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute, to film Carson's play about King as it was performed by the Palestinian National Theater and an African-American gospel choir. The documentary follows the production of the play and the accompanying cultural exchange between two peoples, as well as the harsh realities of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank as seen by the visiting Christian choir. 

Miral, Julian Schnabel's feature film set in Palestine and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by author and journalist Rula Jebreal, will open in cinemas in ten major US cities starting with New York and Los Angeles on 25 March. As a young girl the title character, Miral, is sent into the care of Hind Husseini, the real-life founder of Dar al-Tifl, a home in Jerusalem which began as a refuge for children who survived the massacre by Zionist forces in the village of Deir Yassin. 

Palestinian-American director of "May in the Summer" and "Amreeka," Cherien Dabis, has been awarded the 2011 Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award. The acclaimed director and filmmaker will, due to the honor, work closely with the Sundance Institute over the upcoming year on her latest project. 

Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, issued a statement last week claiming victory in its campaign to convince the school to become the first U.S. institution of higher learning to divest from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Six companies were targeted by the group for "supporting or profiting from Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories." 

Much is made of 'first time' experiences in life, but nothing in my good and bad education, or professional experience, prepared me for my first time at the Cannes Film Festival. The emotional charge was furthermore doubled, tripled, even quadrupled because the first screening I planned to attend in the theater reserved for the Official Selection Un Certain regard section, was a dearly beloved's first feature film - Annemarie Jacir's Salt of this Sea. 

The Israeli military is facing fresh accusations from a Palestinian human rights group that it is responsible for civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip. Israel has also been accused of targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, as numerous children have been among the civilian casualties in Israeli strikes on the Strip. Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin speaks with a Palestinian human rights expert from Gaza in this special report. 

The closure of Gaza's border crossings has created a multi-million-dollar economy - underneath the Palestinian territory's frontier with Egypt. Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from the Gaza-Egypt border on the intricate network of tunnels that was once used for smuggling weapons and people and is now a vital route into Gaza for medicine, food, and fuel supplies.