The First Palestinian Filmmaker

• CrossFireArabia
• June 15, 2026

Ibrahim Hassan Sarhan was born in Jaffa in 1915. He was the first Palestinian filmmaker. His first film was a documentary about the visit of Saudi King Abdul Aziz in 1935 and included rare footage of Palestine. He also filmed the visit of Ahmed Hilmi Pasha, a member of the Arab Higher Committee, to Palestine and subsequently founded Studio Palestine in Jaffa. He was displaced to Jordan during the 1948 Nakba, where he participated in the first Jordanian feature film, directed by Wasef Sheikh Yassin, titled “Struggle in Jerash” in 1958.

His Death
He died in 1987 in the Shatila refugee camp near Beirut, Lebanon. [1]

References
^ Alaa Al-Ali (November 2, 2009). “Palestine Was Not a Desert: Sarhan Filmed It.” Al-Akhbar (962). Shatila. Archived from the original on April 3, 2010. Retrieved March 27, 2018