In 1996, Aloni began making films. His documentary,
Local Angel (2002), and his first feature-length fiction,
Forgiveness (2006), are both radical interpretations of the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict that have stirred controversy in the
Middle East and internationally. Aloni also directed
Kashmir: Journey to Freedom (2008), a
documentary about the nonviolent movement for liberation and freedom in
Jammu and Kashmir that opened in the
Berlin International Film Festival. Other films include
Left (1996) and
Art/Violence (2013), as well as
Innocent Criminals (2004), a music video with
DAM, Palestinian rap group. Aloni directed and produced
Junction 48, co-written by
Oren Moverman and its star
Tamer Nafar. Aloni was the head cinema coach in the
Freedom Theatre of the
Jenin Refugee Camp. After the 2011 murder of
Juliano Mer Khamis, the founder and head of The Freedom Theater, Aloni directed an Arabic adaptation of
Waiting for Godot with the Freedom Theatre's graduate students, a production that toured to New York. Aloni wrote, directed, and produced the documentary
Why Is We Americans?, focused on famed poet and activist
Amiri Baraka and his son, Newark Mayor
Ras Baraka. The documentary was co-directed by Ayana Stafford-Morris, and features narration from executive producer
Lauryn Hill. For the theme song of the documentary, "What We Want," Aloni produced a music video directed by Stafford-Morris, with Mayor Baraka delivering a passionate message of equality and justice.
Reception Aloni's films have been presented at the
Berlin International Film Festival, the
Toronto International Film Festival, the
Tokyo International Film Festival, the
Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, and the
Jerusalem Film Festival.
Forgiveness (2006), which took the audience
award at the
Woodstock Film Festival in 2006, was described by
Slavoj Žižek as "maybe the most beautiful, powerful and important film ever made about the tragedies of the region." Its theatrical release in the United States opened with Mariam Said, the widow of late
Edward Said, reading the poetry of
Mahmoud Darwish. In 2007, Aloni was a Jury Member for the
Manfred Salzgeber Award in the Panorama section of the
Berlin International Film Festival in
Berlin,
Germany. His film
Junction 48 received the Panorama audience award at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival. ] It received the Best International Narrative Feature award at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Some of Aloni's films have drawn sharp criticism.
Jerusalem Post movie critic Hannah Brown wrote of Aloni's film Forgiveness, "There isn't an award for the most pretentious and annoying movie ever made, but if there were, I'd put my money on Forgiveness. Writer/director Udi Aloni really does deserve some kind of prize for the energy with which he has melded tired cliches, smug pseudo-intellectualism and humorless far left-wing politics into a single movie." The film
Forgiveness (2006), which had its Middle-Eastern premiere in
Ramallah, recently stirred up controversy when the Israeli embassy in Paris threatened to withdraw funding from the Israeli Film Festival in Paris (Israelien de Paris) should they open the festival with the film. Aloni (along with
Naomi Klein,
John Greyson, and others) was an initiator of the Toronto Declaration, a petition to protest plans to "host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv" because according to the petitioners doing so constitutes "staging a propaganda campaign" on behalf of "an apartheid regime.". ==Published works==