Benny Brunner

While shooting State of Suspension in 2008, Brunner stated that he read Salvage or Plunder? Israel's "Collection" of Private Palestinian Libraries in West Jerusalem by Gish Amit. He was "stunned" at the appropriation of 70,000 books by the State of Israel during the 1948 Palestinian exodus as significant to the loss of Palestinian cultural heritage and decided to make a film on the topic. About 6,000 of these books continue to be held today at National Library of Israel where they are labeled as "Abandoned Property".

Brunner's most significant early work is a tribute to then-living Yeshayahu Leibowitz. It explores in particular the impact of Leibowitz's answer to the question of how one may determine who is Jewish. The film won a Taurus trophy for special commendation in Non-Fiction at the Prix Europa in 1991.

Brunner describes a "watershed moment" he experienced in 1988 after reading The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 by Benny Morris, whereupon he envisioned making the book into a film. This was the impetus for his conception of Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948, the first documentary film to examine the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the birth of the state of Israel. Brunner toured with Al-Nakba to discuss the subject with audiences in Israel and San Francisco.

Brunner left Israel in 1986 for an opportunity to make political films. He briefly stayed in London where he did freelance work during the Thatcher era. Brunner moved to the Netherlands later that year.

Benny Brunner (Hebrew: בני ברונר ‎; born 1954) is an Israeli-Dutch filmmaker, born in Bârlad, Romania and based in Amsterdam since 1986. He studied film at Tel Aviv University. Since the late 1980s, Brunner has written, directed and produced films about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including The Concrete Curtain, It Is No Dream, Al-Nakba and The Great Book Robbery, films about Jewish history like The Seventh Million, and films concerning the modern history of the Middle East. He describes himself as "a veteran leftist" and his political films take the side of the 'other'. Brunner has worked in the Middle East, Europe, South Africa, and the United States. In addition to winning a special commendation by the Prix Europa for A Philosopher for All Seasons in 1991, his films have been screened at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, and numerous international, human rights and Jewish film festivals.