This year, a long-running Denton film festival that focuses on Palestine will focus on attacks on journalists and doctors in the war in Gaza.
Broken Lens 2026 will screen three films Jan. 23-24 at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 2200 N. Bell Ave.
Rev. Craig Hunter, the pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church and a member of the group that founded the festival, People for Justice in Palestine, said attendance has grown since its founding 13 years ago.
“When we first started our group, we wanted to do something,” Hunter said, reflecting on the difficulties in talking about the chronic conflict between Israel and Palestine. “We thought, among other things that we’ve done, that film is a good way to engage people. Because people are often more likely to come and watch a film than they are to come and listen to a speaker.”
The inaugural film Broken Lens screened was the Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras. The documentary came out in 2012 and depicted the filmmaker’s experience in the West Bank as the Israeli West Bank Barrier construction encroached on his village’s farmland.
This year, the films have all been made in the last two years, since the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023. Hunter said all three of the films screening at the festival tell stories of the war in Gaza.
“At its core, the festival is still about trying to bring awareness of the issues of human dignity and human rights that are involved, and of American involvement,” Hunter said. “And so I think that core has stayed pretty consistent. I think the context has changed, particularly since the genocide that started just over two years ago.
“I think that, really, for many Americans, they say this is the first live-streamed genocide. Many Americans, especially younger Americans, were getting images on a regular basis.”
The festival is open to the public, Hunter said, but the project doesn’t hide its advocacy for justice for Palestinians.
This year, Broken Lens 2026 will start with a screening of Inside Gaza at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23.
Inside Gaza follows a team of local reporters working for the Agence-France Presse, a global news agency that has covered the conflict in Gaza for decades. The documentary shows the reporters as they run from bombings and document the deprivations and grief unfolding from within the Gaza blockade. International journalists have been barred from Gaza, and the Committee to Project Journalists estimates that 192 journalists had been killed in the war as of August 2025.
At 2 p.m. Jan. 24, the festival will screen Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, a documentary about the harrowing experiences of Palestinian doctors and medics in Gaza and the destruction of Gaza hospitals. The BBC refused to air the documentary. After the film, a panel of North Texas physicians who have volunteered in Gaza will speak and answer questions.
Attendees can join a free catered dinner at 5:30 p.m. before the 7 p.m. screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab. The film dramatizes the emergency workers who spoke with Hind, a Palestinian girl who survived an Israeli shelling as her family tried to flee Gaza by car. Hind called the Palestine Red Crescent Society for help as she was trapped in a car with her dead family members for hours before she was killed. The dramatization uses the real recorded phone call the 5-year-old Hind had with emergency workers.
The event includes art and music. The festival will share a Palestinian embroidery presentation at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 24, along with dabke dancing. Nisreen Hajaj will perform Palestinian music, and Palestinian-American artist Mary Hazboun will have drawings on display, as will an exhibit from “Gaza Habibti,” a group show of Palestinian photography. Curator Hanan Awad will present a talk about the visual storytelling project.
The festival is free. For more information, call Trinity Presbyterian Church at 940-382-8815.
LUCINDA BREEDING-GONZALES can be reached at 940-566-6877 and cbreeding@dentonrc.com.
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