Mohammad Bakri, actor and director of controversial ‘Jenin, Jenin,’ dies at 72

Bakri, whose breakout role as a Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison in the 1980s film ‘Beyond the Walls’ earned him international acclaim, is survived by his six children

Actor and filmmaker Mohammed Bakri, the actor and director of the controversial “Jenin, Jenin” film, died on Wednesday, aged 72.

“Mohammed Bakri died this Wednesday at the Galilee Medical Center” in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya, hospital spokesperson Gal Zaid told AFP.

He died from heart and lung problems, according to his family. He is survived by six children – five sons and a daughter.

Born in Bi’ina, northern Israel, in 1953, into a Muslim family, Bakri started his acting career at Habima, the Haifa Theater and the Kan Theater after graduating from Tel Aviv University.

He appeared in leading Israeli films but was also directed by the French-Greek director Costa-Gavras and Italian filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.

His role as a Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison in the 1980s film “Beyond the Walls” earned him critical acclaim in Israel and around the world.

But his international renown grew with the release of 2002’s “Jenin, Jenin,” which has been widely discredited for falsely alleging that the Israel Defense Forces massacred civilians in the West Bank city of Jenin during the Operation Defensive Shield military campaign at the height of the Second Intifada.

The 53-minute film drew sharp criticism for what many — including the High Court — saw as egregious breaches of documentary and journalistic ethics.

Notably, Bakri, was found to have used misleading cuts in the film to imply deliberate civilian deaths that never happened, specifically in a scene in which an armored personnel carrier — inaccurately referred to as a tank in the movie — is made to look as though it ran over a number of Palestinian prisoners lying on the ground, though it did not, as the director later admitted in court.

The filmmaker also mistranslated Arabic for the subtitles to include words like “genocide” and “massacre,” which were never actually said during interviews. In addition, no Israeli officials were interviewed for the movie to provide an opposing viewpoint.

The Israeli Supreme Court upheld a ban on the film in 2022, deeming it “defamatory.”

He released a follow-up, “Jenin, Jenin 2,” in 2023, which documented a 48-hour IDF incursion into Jenin in July of the same year, in which hundreds of terror suspects were arrested and 13 were killed.

This film, too, proved controversial, with the Israel Police banning screenings of it, saying it amounted to incitement.

Bakri also directed several socially conscious documentaries about the situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

He was an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, telling Israel’s Channel 12 last year that the country hadn’t been a democracy “since the right rose to power.”

Arab-Israeli radio station A-Shams published a tribute on its social media on Wednesday, describing Bakri as a “free voice”.

“From his early days in theatre, art was not simply a pastime for Mohammed Bakri, but a tool for raising awareness and engaging in dialogue,” the radio station said.

“The legacy left by Mohammed Bakri will remain, reminding us that art can be an act of resistance.”