The Encampments Documentary Tells Columbia It’s Not Over Yet 

On March 21, the same day Columbia University conceded to President Trump’s policy demands as a condition for restoring $400 million in federal funding, a timely screening of a new documentary dissected the 2024 student protests for Gaza at Columbia that sparked an international phenomenon. The Encampments (2025), produced by BreakThrough News and Watermelon Pictures, extricates the movement from the grips of mainstream media narratives and places it back in the hands of its organizers, including Palestinian graduate student and lead co-negotiator Mahmoud Khalil, who is currently detained and facing possible deportation.

Directed by BreakThrough News journalist Kei Pritsker and filmmaker Michael T. Workman, with rapper Macklemore and BreakThrough Editor-in-Chief Ben Becker among the film’s executive producers, the 76-minute documentary follows the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at Columbia University over the two-week period. The film specifically highlights the voices of Khalil, co-negotiator and graduate student Sueda Polat, since-expelled PhD candidate and student worker union leader Grant Miner, and university alum Naye Idriss.

Polat, Miner, Pritsker, and Workman attended an emergency evening screening at the Crosby Hotel on March 21 and participated in a Q&A hosted by Munir Atalla, head of production and acquisitions at Watermelon Pictures.

“We want this documentary to be a tool to agitate, ignite, and inspire the movement and to also hopefully bring new people in,” Workman said at the screening, also noting that the film was created to “protect all of the students who are under fire right now.”

The Encampments rewinds the timeline to the organizers’ decision, on April 17, to escalate their push for the university to divest from weapons and surveillance technology manufacturers supplementing Israel’s killing and destruction in Gaza and settler expansion in the Occupied West Bank.

Archival footage also positions the Gaza Solidarity encampment demands with that of other historic Columbia student protests. Among these are the 1968 student occupation of Hamilton Hall in protest of the university’s plan to develop a gym in the city-owned Morningside Park with minimal access for Harlem’s residents and school’s research ties to the Vietnam War, and the 1985 protest (successfully) calling for the divestment from South African companies amid Apartheid.

Throughout the documentary, Pritsker and Workman interpolate and subvert footage the overpowering mainstream and conservative media hysteria that characterized Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity encampment for the rest of the world. They cover the encampment’s lifespan through onsite recordings of students peacefully protesting, distributing donated supplies, and leading activism and history workshops on the campus lawns. The directors also weave in evidence of the police violence deployed during suppression tactics, sweeps, arrests, and ultimately, the armed raid on Hamilton Hall.

The film expands on Khalil’s family’s expulsion from Palestine and childhood in a refugee camp in Syria, Polat’s observations from working in the West Bank, and Miner’s process of adopting anti-Zionist ideologies in light of his upbringing, contextualizing the organizers’ stakes in the movement that has often been characterized as trendy, empty, and self-serving.

Pritsker and Workman deliberately include footage and audio taken in Gaza — cellphone videos of bleeding and injured children screaming in overcrowded hospitals, Israeli forces bombing universities, and strife in displacement camps — to emphasize what the movement’s primary focus.

The documentary addresses the explosive allegations of antisemitic behavior on campus and throughout the encampments. Testimony from anti-Zionist Jewish students who participated in the encampments and an interview with an anonymized Columbia staffer who looked into complaints about antisemitism on campus are juxtaposed with footage of former university President Minouche Shafik’s April 17 Congressional hearing as well as allegations from pro-Israel Jewish students regarding campus safety.

Ending with Gaza-based Emmy award-winning journalist Bisan Owda’s monologue about Gaza paying the ultimate price not just for freedom but global acknowledgement paired with Khalil’s dreams of his family returning to Palestine, the documentary informs Columbia University that it’s not over yet.

Having watched a rough cut of the film in December during what he called a “lull,” Miner told the audience that the renewed killing in Gaza paired with his expulsion and the detention of Khalil “has reignited the movement,” necessitating the film’s early release.

“There is like a real desire to fight back again,” Miner said. “Right now, it feels the same way it felt in the months and weeks leading up to the encampment in that people are mad.”

Ahead of its worldwide premiere at the CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen on April 27, The Encampments began screening at the Angelika Film Center in Manhattan on March 28, with dates running through Thursday, April 10, prior to its select nationwide release.

In a statement to Hyperallergic, Atalla of Watermelon Pictures said he hopes that the film is “just the start of an impactful run that brings more attention to Mahmoud’s case.” He noted that the weekend screenings amounted to a record-breaking theatrical release, setting the new highest per-theater average for a documentary since Free Solo (2018).