About The Film
90 Min Documentary | Hebrew - Arabic - English | Work in Progress
Can Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, still imagine a shared future?
Every story of this conflict depends on where you stand.
But what happens when you stand in the middle?
Ibrahim Abd El-Kader has spent his entire life navigating the complex reality of being both Palestinian and Israeli - a rare and overlooked window into one of the world's most complex conflicts.
The Other Ibrahim is not only a portrait, but a gradual unveiling - of a man, of a hidden history, and of the limits of what can be known. It asks a question that grows more urgent with every revelation: how do you tell the story of someone who has lived so many lives, across so many borders, without ever fully belonging to any of them?
And beyond that - in a reality increasingly defined by separation and hostility - can the belief in a shared life survive? For Ibrahim, despite everything, it still does.
Synopsis
In a café in Tel Aviv, a chance encounter opens the door to the life of Ibrahim Abd El-Kader - a man who moves between worlds that rarely meet. A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Ibrahim appears at first as a sharp, charismatic storyteller: a bohemian intellectual, a political thinker, a familiar presence in cafés where conversation never ends.
But as the film unfolds, another Ibrahim slowly emerges.
Behind his disarming openness lies a life shaped by secrets, disappearances, and reinventions. At the age of twenty, he fled Israel and resurfaced across the Arab world, navigating borders both physical and invisible. Over the years, he moved through radically different lives: journalist, translator, political activist, and cultural insider - but also a man drawn into more shadowed territories. In his attempts to survive, he became involved in drug trafficking, took part in a sophisticated bank fraud operation that stretched from Israel to Europe, and lived on the margins of legality as much as ideology.
At other moments, he stood at the heart of political and cultural movements: joining leftist circles in Israel where Jews and Arabs once collaborated, working behind the scenes in media and artistic productions, and taking part in the legendary Voice of Peace ship - a floating radio station broadcasting messages of coexistence across a region at war.
Each revelation complicates the portrait. Each story reshapes what we think we understand. Ibrahim is never one thing - and never fully graspable.
Contextual Notes
The Nakba (“the catastrophe”) refers to the tragedy experienced by Palestinians in 1948, when around 750,000 people became refugees during the creation of the State of Israel. Some of them remained and continued to live alongside Jews. These Palestinians, now citizens of Israel, represent about 20% of the country’s population today-predominantly Muslim, with a Christian minority of around 7%. In Israel, they are generally referred to as “Israeli Arabs”; Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza-who often share close family ties with them-refer to them as “the Palestinians of ’48”.
Their history remains largely unknown, both in Israel and in the rest of the world. Acknowledging the immense price paid by this population during the 1948 war is something Israeli society is not ready to confront. Fear of the “Palestinians of ’48” remains widespread-often without real foundation. In contact with Ibrahim, that fear begins to fade. His demands are far less threatening than many Israelis imagine.
Ibrahim’s communism reflects a broader trend within the generation of ’48. Many of them turned toward communism - initially in partnership with Jewish communists, and later largely without them. This political current, founded on a vision of fraternity between the two peoples, continues even today to resonate with a large part of the Arab public, within an Israel that is increasingly divided and polarized.
Who is Ibrahim?
Born in 1941 on a farm north of Jaffa and Tel-Aviv, Ibrahim was deported with his family from their land to Taybeh, where he still lives today.
Already as a young person, he felt uneasy with his life under the military regime that was forced on the Arab population inside Israel from 1948 to 1966. In 1961, he managed to escape to Gaza, at that time - under Egyptian control. He eventually finds work in Cairo, as a presenter for the Voice of Palestine. From there begins a life of travel: journalism in India, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and later to Europe and back to Israel-Palestine, during the Six Days War in 1967.
He lived through nearly a century of Israeli-Palestinian history from a rarely told perspective: that of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, the invisible people so seldom spoken about. His life reads like a novel. Within it lies the Nakba experienced from the inside, years of political activism, intellectual circles where Jews and Arabs still mingled, disillusionment, and a form of resistance that persists despite everything.
He carries within him a memory that has never truly been filmed, because almost no one who holds that memory is still alive to speak it, along with a stubborn, almost unwavering conviction that a shared life between Jews and Palestinians is possible. That it once existed. And that it can therefore exist again.
Ibrahim may be, today, one of the last people in the world who witnessed what he witnessed from where he stood: inside Israel, inside the catastrophe, inside the long and painful aftermath. He is a witness. Perhaps the last of his kind.
Creators
Yoram Ron | Director
I first met Ibrahim in 2015, in a café in Tel Aviv. He was wearing his bucket hat, speaking loudly about politics, his favorite subject, and, I believe, thinking even louder. I began filming our conversations without really knowing why, but I sensed that the stories he was telling me were precious. I was also interested in Ibrahim's unique critical view of Israeli society, and in his uncompromising, optimistic message - for both Jews and Muslims. Over the years, Ibrahim became a friend. And in this context, that kind of friendship is far from insignificant.
I have been an independent filmmaker since 2002. I created the documentary Absent God: Emmanuel Levinas and the Humanism of the Other (2014) and have worked on many other film projects and productions. Alongside my filmmaking, I have maintained a long-standing practice as a lecturer at universities, academies, and art and design schools. Since 2025, I have been based in Germany, where I continue to develop and contribute to projects rooted in a deep engagement with Jewish–Arab relations and modern Jewish thought. My current work includes a unique documentary project on Walter Benjamin as well as research projects for institutions and organizations dedicated to advancing social change and democratic renewal in Israeli society.
Reem Ghanayem | Co-Author
I am a Palestinian poet, translator, and researcher specializing in Arabic and English literature. I am the author of two poetry collections, Mag and A Life of Exiles and Prophecies: Self Portraits, which explore themes of exile, identity, and transmission. For me, language is both a tool and an artistic medium. I see literature as a space of resistance in the face of the violence experienced by Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel.
I am involved in numerous literary and artistic collaborations with writers from Gaza, working to bring their texts across borders and languages. Among other projects, I translated into Hebrew the poetry collection of Gazan poet Husam Maarouf and organize public readings of Palestinian poetry for Israeli audiences, using translation and performance as tools for dialogue and critical engagement. As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, my participation in the film also brings the experience of the Palestinians of 1948 into focus through the perspective of a younger generation of the Palestinian minority in Israel. As a woman, I contribute a distinct voice that broadens the film's exploration of memory, identity, and belonging—perspectives that are often absent from dominant historical and political narratives. "To write a will under siege is not surrender - it's defiance. It says: I existed. I felt. I belonged. I am not yours to erase." - Reem Ghanayem. In 2024, I published Book of Wills in Arabic, a collective project bringing together eighteen Palestinian writers from Gaza, each writing their own will from within the enclave. Conceived as a testimony to the human cost of the war, four of the eighteen writers were killed, along with members of their families, under Israeli bombardment before the book’s publication. English and Hebrew editions are being published in 2026.
Producers
Camille Padet-Allely
France
I am a writer and documentary creator fascinated by questions of memory and identity, which shape how we define ourselves today. I am especially drawn to grey zones, lives that resist stereotypes, fixed categories, and simplified narratives. Exile, transmission, and belonging are at the core of my work, as well as long-term collaborations with researchers and people from the academic world, whose approaches nourish my storytelling. Trained in history and political science, I completed my master’s degree between Russia and France, focusing on political media and narrative power. I began my career in cultural diplomacy before moving to Israel/Palestine to work with the French Embassy’s cultural services, an experience that became a turning point toward writing and documentary projects rooted in lived experience, intimacy, and political complexity. I have lived and worked across several countries and speak French, English, Russian, and Hebrew. My own position as a French co-writer and producer of The Other Ibrahim creates a third space within the project. It enables a collective, three-voiced writing process that is both rare and demanding at a time when Israeli-Palestinian collaborations have become increasingly difficult. This shared authorship is itself an artistic and political gesture: a space where different memories and narratives can confront one another without being flattened or prematurely reconciled.
Michel Zana
Blue Train Films, France
Founded in 2017 by Michel Zana, Blue Train Films is dedicated to promoting socially engaged cinema and supporting emerging talents in both fiction and documentary filmmaking. Among the company’s first productions were Only Silence (Seul le silence, 2017), a short film by Lebanese director Katia Jarjoura about the journey of a Syrian refugee in France, and Sudan, Remember Us (Soudan, Souviens-toi), a feature documentary by Hind Meddeb selected at the Venice Days in 2024, at Toronto International Film Festival, at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and subsequently presented at numerous international festivals. Michel Zana began his career in Los Angeles after studying filmmaking at the École Supérieure d’Études Cinématographiques (ESEC) in Paris. From 1988 to 1996, he worked successively as a production assistant, casting director, and production manager. Upon returning to France, he became executive producer on creative television documentaries for Artline Films and SZ Productions. In 2003, he joined Sophie Dulac at Dulac Productions and co-founded Dulac Distribution the same year. As Director of Dulac Productions and Dulac Distribution, he has (co-)produced more than 20 feature films and distributed over 180 films theatrically. Blue Train Films is currently developing three feature documentaries: Stray Bullets (À balles perdues) by Djanis Bouzyani (France), Akerman, The City of Lost by Michale Boganim (France, Belgium, Palestine), and Reclaiming Time by Fuad Hindieh (France, Palestine). At the same time, the company is developing three fiction feature films: I Killed John Sutter (J’ai tué John Sutter) by Philippe Ramos (France), the first feature film by Katia Jarjoura, Hijacking Beirut (Braquer Beyrouth) (France, Lebanon, Norway), and Ordinary Madness (La folie ordinaire) by Rafi Pitts (France, Germany). The company is also developing Fuad Hindieh’s first fiction short film, The Poster (Le Poster) (France, Palestine).
Titus Kreyenberg
unafilm, Germany
I am a writer and documentary creator fascinated by questions of memory and identity, which shape how we define ourselves today. I am especially drawn to grey zones, lives that resist stereotypes, fixed categories, and simplified narratives. Exile, transmission, and belonging are at the core of my work, as well as long-term collaborations with researchers and people from the academic world, whose approaches nourish my storytelling. Trained in history and political science, I completed my master’s degree between Russia and France, focusing on political media and narrative power. I began my career in cultural diplomacy before moving to Israel/Palestine to work with the French Embassy’s cultural services, an experience that became a turning point toward writing and documentary projects rooted in lived experience, intimacy, and political complexity. I have lived and worked across several countries and speak French, English, Russian, and Hebrew. My own position as a French co-writer and producer of The Other Ibrahim creates a third space within the project. It enables a collective, three-voiced writing process that is both rare and demanding at a time when Israeli-Palestinian collaborations have become increasingly difficult. This shared authorship is itself an artistic and political gesture: a space where different memories and narratives can confront one another without being flattened or prematurely reconciled.