The Encampments

81' 2025

dir.: Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker

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To protest their university’s investments in the arms industry, students at one of America’s most prestigious institutions, Columbia University, join an occupation strike. As national elections draw near, tensions escalate, and the atmosphere grows increasingly volatile. Right-wing media outlets erupt in outrage, with Fox News denouncing the movement as “woke anti-Semitic terror.” Eventually, police storm the campus, violently dispersing the protesters.

The surge of pro-Palestinian activism that swept across American universities in 2024 began at New York’s Columbia University in New York, a historic free speech bastion and the site of major Vietnam War protests in the 1960s. Students erect a tent-city occupation to oppose the university’s investments in the arms industry and, as the presidential election looms, tensions rise sharply. Right-wing media outlets, led by Fox News, decry the movement as “woke anti-Semitic terror,” fanning the flames of public outrage. When police finally storm the campus, the crackdown is swift and brutal. Yet amid the chaos, the filmmakers capture the raw intensity of a generation unwilling to remain silent, young people risking everything to defend their principles. “The Encampments” chronicles their defiance and offers a searing critique of Western hypocrisy; the double standards that shape political and moral responses to the war in Palestine.

Marta Lityńska

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