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Over three million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli military authority since 1967. Israeli director Yoav Shamir documents the impact of the enforced boundaries known as “checkpoints” on the Israeli border guards drafted to monitor them and the Palestinian citizens who must pass through them daily.

Shot in a cinema verite style, a style of documentary filmmaking that stresses unbiased realism, the film shows these anonymous, one-time encounters between both sides and the lasting political, social and cultural effects. Checkpoint gives a chilling look at the destructive impact on both societies.

Diamonds are symbols of wealth, elegance and love around the world. But in several African nations, they have been a means to power, a reason to terrorize millions of innocent civilians, and may have even helped finance some of the world’s most brutal terrorists. The human cost of the illicit global diamond trade is examined in the provocative documentary.

During the war in Vietnam, thousands of people in the Vietnamese province of Cu Chi lived in an elaborate system of underground tunnels. Originally built in the time of the French, the tunnels were enlarged during the American presence. When the Americans began bombing the villages of Cu Chi, the survivors went underground where they remained for the duration of the war.

Al Ghezali reported that he had seen three passengers in a car all dead with their faces and teeth burnt, the body intact, and no sign of projectiles. There were other inexplicable aspects: the terrain where the battle took place was dug up by the American military and replaced with other fresh earth, the bodies that were not hit by projectiles had shrunk to just slightly more than one meter in height.

The invasion of Iraq heralded promises of freedom from tyranny and equal rights for the women of Iraq. But three years on, the reality of everyday life for women inside Iraq is a different story.

To make this film, two Iraqi women risk their lives to spend three months travelling all over the country with a camera to record the lives and experiences of women they meet.

A 30 minute video from Witness partner Images Asia which is working at the Thai-Burmese border. This documentary is about children who have become victims or participants in Burma’s armed conflicts, used as porters, human shields, or human minesweepers. It shows the life of children who have been killed, forcibly conscripted, unwillingly separated from their families, kidnapped and tortured, and it includes interviews with child soldiers.

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

Hailed as “powerful” and “quietly unflinching,” Patricia Foulkrod’s searing documentary feature includes exclusive footage that will stir audiences. The filmmaker’s subjects are patriotic young Americans – ordinary men and women who heeded the call for military service in Iraq – as they experience recruitment and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home – with personal demons, an uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield the most powerful weapon of all – the truth.

After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans suffered toxic reactions, neurological damage, and rare cancers due to exposure to 2,4,5,-D and 2,4,5-T dioxin that was used in the form of the defoliant Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the U.S. military denied the problem and failed to heed any of the lessons of this chemical butchery. Instead, it expanded its harmful legacy to the current generation of soldiers and civilians exposed to new, more deadly chemical toxins in the Persian Gulf.

Afghanistan, war in the Hindu Kush, a war fought by the Soviet Union to prevent the spread of Islamic Fundamentalism. Like Vietnam, a conflict dominated by the helicopter gunship. Unlike Vietnam, a hit and run guerilla war not all rebels could agree how to win and one fought under often atrocious conditions for which the soviets were untrained and unprepared. Afghanistan is a remote landlocked country whose closeness to Iran’s Islamic revolution scared the Kremlin. It’s also a wild mountainous country with few metal roads. This lack of easy communications dictated a two pronged invasion to secure the capital Kabul and the towns along the road system.