Mohammad Bakri, actor and director of controversial ‘Jenin, Jenin,’ dies at 72

Mohammad Bakri, the actor and director of the controversial “Jenin, Jenin” film, has died aged 72, Hebrew-language media reports.

Bakri’s family says that he died in a hospital in Nahariya after a battle with heart disease. He is survived by six children — five sons and a daughter.

He was born in 1953 in Bi’ina in northern Israel. After studying at Tel Aviv University, he performed at Habima, the Haifa Theater and the Khan Theater, with his big break coming when he played the lead in the multi-award-winning 1984 movie “Beyond the Walls.”

Bakri ran into controversy over his 2002 film “Jenin, Jenin.” The 53-minute film drew sharp criticism for what many — including the High Court — saw as egregious breaches of documentary and journalistic ethics.

Notably, Bakri, was found to have used misleading cuts in the film to imply deliberate civilian deaths that never happened, specifically in a scene in which an armored personnel carrier — inaccurately referred to as a tank in the movie — is made to look as though it ran over a number of Palestinian prisoners lying on the ground, though it did not, as the director later admitted in court.

The filmmaker also mistranslated Arabic for the subtitles to include words like “genocide” and “massacre,” which were never actually said during interviews. In addition, no Israeli officials were interviewed for the movie to provide an opposing viewpoint.