Miral (2010), dir. Julian Schnabel

From Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls and Basquiat, comes MIRAL, the visceral, first-person diary of a young girl growing up in East Jerusalem as she confronts the effects of occupation and war in every corner of her life. Like his paintings made out of shards, Schnabel pieces together momentary fragments of Miral's world - how she was formed, who influenced her, all that she experiences in her tumultuous early years - to create a raw, moving, poetic portrait of a woman whose small, personal story is inextricably woven into the bigger history unfolding all around her.