Itai Anghel

February 2026 · Iran / Syria

The Women Most Wanted by Iran

As Iran brutally crushes a new wave of protests, Itai Anghel travels to the Iran-Iraq border to meet the Iranian Kurdish women who have taken up arms to overthrow the regime in Tehran.

The film also captures the final days of Rojava in Syria, with rare footage filmed just before al-Julani's forces overran the Kurdish autonomous region.

February 2025 · Syria

From Damascus with Love

An extraordinary, first-hand journey into post-Assad Syria. Itai Anghel gains access to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus and to military bases once used to launch attacks on Israel, and uncovers secret factories producing Captagon, the 'jihadists' drug' that financed Iran's Shiite axis.

He stands at the very site in Damascus where the Israeli spy Eli Cohen was executed, and meets the last remaining Jews in Syria.

September 2024 · Northern Israel

Metula: When Hezbollah Sees Everything

Metula, once called "the Switzerland of the Middle East," is now a ghost town. Nearly all its residents fled. Those who remained endure Hezbollah fire from just across the fence in southern Lebanon.

As the fighting in Gaza ebbs, an even greater catastrophe looms on Israel's northern border. Since the day after October 7, Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, has battered northern Israel with rockets and drones.

The film follows the few who stayed, feeling abandoned by the state, as they struggle to survive and defend the town their ancestors founded over a century ago.

November 2023 · Gaza

Back to Gaza

A raw documentation of combat, with all the fear it entails. Itai Anghel joins reserve fighters from an IDF elite unit.

The last time they were in Gaza they lost friends; some even entered tunnels pursuing the Hamas kidnappers who had abducted a member of their unit. This time, once again, the experience is beyond words.

October 2023 · Israel

Waiting for the Red-Haired Kidnapped Children

Shiri Bibas and her two red-haired children, together with her husband, became symbols of the atrocities and kidnappings perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Itai Anghel, for Uvda, tells the family's story and the dramatic moments when the world seemed to fall apart.

October 2023 · Israel

7/10: The Massacre in Nir Oz

The story of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where a quarter of the community was either slaughtered or kidnapped on October 7. Itai Anghel was the first journalist able to enter the kibbutz after the attack.

March 2023 · Ukraine

Alone in Donbas: The Hell of Bakhmut

One year into the war, Donbas had become the Ukrainians' worst nightmare. Russia was seizing large parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, occupying about 18% of Ukraine. Along the front stretched hundreds of kilometres of World War I-style trenches. At the height of the battles, Itai Anghel reached the trenches and, rarely, documented a spearhead company stationed just a kilometre from Russian forces. Some of the soldiers filmed there were later killed in those same trenches.

Bakhmut saw some of the war's fiercest fighting. Fear was paralysing; the city felt like a ghost town. The few civilians outside sprinted between sniper fire, walking kilometres to fill bottles at the only working tap. With Russian forces already inside parts of the city, residents huddled in shelters, trying to survive. These were Bakhmut's final weeks before Russia captured it.

2022 · Ukraine

Last Stop Before Kyiv

Itai Anghel arrived in Kyiv three days before Russia's invasion, when locals assured him war would not happen. The shock was immediate. From the first moments he documented a transformation, from disbelief to the realisation that this was an existential fight. Meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky, he heard both the expectations placed on Israel and the frustration at Jerusalem's reluctance to risk angering Putin.

Anghel embedded along the front lines with the army and militias facing the massive Russian armoured column advancing on the capital, a story of Ukrainian resilience that culminates in Kyiv's liberation, and in the grim recognition of the destruction, killings and massacres that would define the long war ahead.

2021 · Armenia / Azerbaijan

Their War, Our Weapons

How Israeli weapons decided a historic conflict, and how Israel chose a side, giving Azerbaijan what it needed to defeat a friendly nation.

For decades Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over Nagorno-Karabakh. The balance shifted dramatically in the latest war, largely because of advanced "suicide drones," many of them from Israel. While documenting on the Armenian side, Itai Anghel fled Israeli-made drones. On the Azeri side, he witnessed a victory parade showcasing those same drones, with many Shia Muslim citizens waving Israeli flags.

Armenia is friendly to Israel, but business interests, and Azerbaijan's long border with Iran, help explain Israel's decision to arm Baku. This rare record captures the moment when suicide drones emerged as a dominant force in modern warfare.

2020 · Syria

The Return of the Black Flags

Itai Anghel is in Syria as the United States kills Iran's top general, Qasem Soleimani, and the region turns upside down. The killing, together with Turkey's incursion, helps bring ISIS back from the grave.

Rare footage shows hundreds of ISIS prisoners crammed into tiny cells, stacked almost one atop another. Filmed during Syria's holiest Christian week, between Christmas and New Year, these were terrible days for the country's Christians, facing renewed jihadist infiltration, ruined churches and outgunned front-line forces.

2017 · Iraq

Invisibles in Mosul

A rare inside account of the battle against ISIS in the former "capital" of the Islamic State. Itai Anghel embedded with Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite special forces fighting to retake the city, his Israeli identity concealed throughout, which added a layer of risk to the coverage.

What looked like victory carried a darker turn: the fall of ISIS paved the way for the rise of the Shiite axis, Israel's most significant threat since its founding. In the Middle East, triumph and peril often come hand in hand.

2016 · Syria

The Miracle of Kobani

Kobani, a Kurdish city nearly destroyed by ISIS, is bound to one image that shook the world: three-year-old Alan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Turkey as his family tried to reach Europe.

His father, Abdullah Kurdi, later returned to Kobani and told Itai Anghel the story that transformed how the world saw the refugee crisis. The film unfolds against the hellish battle for the city, where Kurdish guerrillas fought fiercely against ISIS.

2016 · Syria

Euphrates Frontline: The Foreign Volunteers

Along the Euphrates in Rojava, YPG guerrillas hold the eastern bank while ISIS occupies Jarabulus across the water. Kurdish women take aim at ISIS positions, a mark of their singular role in the fight.

The film follows foreign volunteers, from Norway, the United States and Sweden, who left comfortable lives to join the YPG at a time when many states dared not intervene.

December 2014 · Syria / Iraq

No Free Steps to Heaven

In 2014 the world recoiled at the meteoric rise of ISIS, as jihadists seized an area the size of Britain within months. While most fled, Kurdish guerrillas in Syria and Iraq stood and fought, their female fighters becoming the jihadists' worst nightmare.

Itai Anghel includes rare interviews with captured ISIS militants, a striking look into the minds of men who set out to terrorise the world.

2010 · 35 min · Iraq / Turkey

The Kurdish Guerrilla: A Rare Encounter with the PKK Leader

Turkey's most wanted man, the PKK commander, hides in the mountains of northern Iraq, moving constantly to evade capture. In a rare interview with an Israeli journalist, he tells Itai Anghel that Israel serves as a model for the Kurdish struggle, and wonders why Israel will not support their fight for statehood.

The Kurds, over 35 million people, are the world's largest stateless nation. The meeting also documents the extraordinary presence of Kurdish women fighters; on these front lines, equality is complete.

Filmed amid the Israel-Turkey crisis after the Mavi Marmara incident, as anti-Israel protests roiled Turkey, while Kurdistan appears instead as a potential ally for Israel in the region.

February 2012 · Tunisia / Libya / Egypt

Mohamed Bouazizi: The Man Who Ignited the Arab World

Mohamed Bouazizi never sought to make history, yet his death ignited uprisings that toppled regimes, raised hopes for democracy, and unleashed a violent wave of jihadism that reshaped the Middle East.

Itai Anghel meets Bouazizi's sister, who recounts his final days, while original animation brings to life the pivotal moments in that Tunisian marketplace. A year on, the film revisits both Tunisia and Egypt to find the "heroes of the revolution" it had documented at the height of the turmoil.

2011 · Egypt

The Revolution Across the Border: Tahrir Square

An eyewitness account from the streets of Cairo during the revolution, at a time when many in Israel viewed events with fear and panic. The film offers Israelis a rare chance to meet the people of the revolution and to understand their struggle for freedom.

2005 · Iraq

The Death of the Sniper of Fallujah

Of all Iraq's cities, Fallujah was the Americans' worst nightmare. Itai Anghel patrols with US Marines through a city where a predominantly Sunni population fights them fiercely, and where the sniper later immortalised in American Sniper takes aim.

In the chaos, combatants, insurgents and civilians blur together. Fallujah would later become the first city in Iraq to fall to ISIS. Anghel also ventures out alone, without the Marines, to hear from locals and fighters what they would never say while he was embedded.

November 2005 · Iraq

The Revenge of the Tractor

Embedded with US forces in Iraq at a time when Sunni ex-Baathists targeted them relentlessly, the film follows an American push to build a new Iraqi army of Shia, Sunni and Kurds, despite sectarian rifts so deep that serving together seemed impossible.

Training-camp scenes foreshadow the tragedy to come, when this army would later face ISIS in battle. Fallujah would become the first Iraqi city to fall to ISIS.

2006 · Lebanon

Lebanon: A Battle Between the IDF and Hezbollah

A rare inside view of battle. Itai Anghel joins an IDF unit crossing into Lebanon and coming into contact with Hezbollah forces.

2005 · Gaza

The Rise of Hamas

A documentary exploring the rise of Hamas in Gaza, recorded as it unfolded.

Hebrew audio, no subtitles

2004 · Gaza

A Tale of a Photojournalist in Gaza

Ahmad Jadallah, a Gaza-based photographer, captured an image during Israeli shelling in Jabalia that won World Press Photo of the Year. Wounded in the bombing, he photographed those dying beside him just before he lost consciousness.

The family story is complex: his brother took part in the Hamas cell that abducted the Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. Yet Ahmad dedicates his work to the hope that peace is still possible.

2004 · Ramallah

The Funeral of Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, died and was buried at the Muqata'a in Ramallah in a historic event that drew tens of thousands. Despite warnings to Israeli journalists to stay away, Itai Anghel went to Ramallah to document the funeral, speak with the crowd, and ask whether there was still room to discuss the future of both peoples.

2007 · DR Congo

The Raped Women

In eastern Congo, an estimated thousand women are assaulted every day, and beyond the brutality, mass rape is at times pursued as deliberate policy.

Itai Anghel's report had a major impact in Israel and led him to help launch aid projects: first a Tel Aviv rock concert in support of the cause, then a delegation of leading Israeli gynecologists who set up clinics in eastern Congo to treat hundreds of women.

2007 · DR Congo

Born to Kill: The Child Soldiers

Militias abduct children and force them to kill neighbours, and sometimes their own families, so they will be loathed and unable to return home, then drug and indoctrinate them into ruthless fighters. The film follows those working to bring these children back to civilian life.

2020 · Israel

Covid: Inside the Intensive Care Unit

The first documentation from inside a Covid intensive care unit, filming patients on ventilators. The hospital made the humane decision to allow relatives to say farewell before their loved ones passed away.

2018 · Korea

North Korea and the USA: Towards War or Peace

At the tense border between North and South Korea, and under the gaze of the United States, Itai Anghel documents the threat of a wider war alongside the unlikely rapprochement between Trump and Kim.

2012 · Sinai / Eritrea / Tel Aviv

Trading People and Their Organs in Sinai

A shocking exposé of Eritrean refugees kidnapped in Sinai on their way to Israel. The kidnappers demanded ransoms from relatives already in Israel, and when payment failed, organs were harvested and sold.

The film exposed collaborators on both sides of the border, Israeli and Egyptian.