There are few more recurring images in America — the supposed land of the free — that represent its authoritarian tendencies than that of student protesters being brutally arrested. Be it in the late 1960s and 1970s when young people demanded an end to the war in Vietnam or the more recent present when protest encampments were established at campuses nationwide in an attempt to stop the Israeli military's devastation of Gaza, all are united in how they have been met with violent repression. Scratch away the wholesome, apple pie, and freedom-loving facade America claims for itself, and you'll find tear gas and riot police are at the core of this country's identity. In the incisive The Encampments, filmmakers Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman cut right to the heart of what this looked like at Columbia University over several months in 2024, as a collective of students attempted to stop the slaughter of civilian Palestinians and the United States' support of Israel's military operation.
The result is a documentary whose relative brevity — much of this due to how this story remains ongoing — packs a needed complexity just as it does an unavoidable agony at how painfully familiar it all is. Taking us through the history of protest at Columbia and the painful story of Palestine that many of the students carry with them, the film is unafraid to take a side as it makes clear there is no standing by while state violence marches on. At the same time, we see how the protesters are dismissed as being misguided kids. The Encampments confronts this head-on, and through decisive cuts that show how far removed these accusations are from reality, it makes a compelling, thoughtful and powerful portrait. Crafted with a clarity of purpose that ensures it moves beyond the reductive headlines to highlight the students' motivations and solidarity, its timeliness provides merely one part of its resonance.
At the same time, The Encampments coming out now has much to do with the headlines it has gotten swept up in. While the film profiles several students involved in the cause, the detention of spokesperson Mahmoud Khalil — a permanent resident of the U.S. who has not been accused of any crime — hangs over everything. The Encampments maintains an emphasis on the collective just as it takes us into how Khalil was one of the leaders who, as we hear him recount in detail, negotiated with Columbia (which has since caved to troubling Trump administration threats to its funding and has further thrown its students under the bus) to get them to divest from weapons companies.
It's this depth, as well as some proper journalism the film does in talking to a high-level source at the university, that captures the bigger picture about the hard work of pushing institutions to live up to their purported values. While activists are often valorized as time goes on, it's tough going in the moment that relies on groups of people holding one another up when crackdowns come. No matter how disciplined, committed and correct the protesters are, The Encampments shines an unflinching light on how even the flimsiest of pretexts can be used to justify state repression.
And come it has as Khalil and students at colleges across the country are targeted for their speech. Much of this is part of a broader targeting of immigrants, with students at UW, Seattle University and Gonzaga all recently having their visas revoked with no explanation, which should concern all of us. At one key point in the documentary, when Khalil is asked about the personal risks he may face for speaking out, he answers with a courage that serves as a potent indictment of not just of how bad things have gotten, but how they have always been on the cusp of being in this country. The Encampments cuts through all the noise and shows us who America really is.
The Encampments
Directed by Kei Pritsker & Michael T Workman
At The Magic Lantern
