The Thin Green Line — Overview
The Thin Green Line examines everyday life, memory, identity, and political tension across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories through observational documentary filmmaking and visual anthropology.
The Thin Green Line: Project Description
Directed by Alex Goldblum, The Thin Green Line is a feature-length documentary exploring life in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories through cinema vérité cinematography and montage editing. The film takes its name from the Green Line, the border separating Israel from the West Bank, and uses this geographic and political boundary as a framework for examining the human realities that exist on both sides of the divide.
Beginning with the historical formation of the modern State of Israel and the geopolitical transformations that followed the wars of 1948 and 1967, the documentary moves beyond conventional political narration to focus on atmosphere, daily life, and lived experience. From the sound of the Muezzin echoing across city streets to the Mediterranean waves breaking along the shoreline, the film captures the emotional and cultural textures of the region while reflecting on nationalism, displacement, religion, memory, and coexistence.
Rather than presenting a singular political argument, The Thin Green Line seeks to document the complexity of a deeply contested landscape through immersive visual storytelling, observational filmmaking, and a poetic documentary style.
As a documentary filmmaker, I am interested in using visual anthropology and observational cinema to preserve moments of cultural memory and human experience within politically contested spaces. The Thin Green Line was created as an attempt to look beyond headlines and ideology, using cinematic language to explore the emotional atmosphere, contradictions, and humanity that exist on both sides of the Green Line.