’Akkoub and za’atar are two wild edible plants essential to Palestinian life. Growing natively in microclimates across Palestine, their foraging, cooking and sharing have helped sustain the health and cultural traditions of indigenous communities for thousands of years.

Since 1977, these plants—along with several others—have gradually been placed under environmental protection by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. While cultivated versions remain available, this legislation has restricted Palestinians’ longstanding foraging practices and connections to the land.

Filmed across the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, Jumana Manna’s Foragers (2022) blends fiction, documentary and archival footage to examine how settler-colonial laws reshape access to land, food and cultural practice. In Manna’s words, the film asks, ‘what is made extinct and what gets to live on; who gets to decide the fate of herb-picking cultures.’ 

Foragers presents food as a vessel for family and community histories tied to land. At the same time, it exposes the paradox of preservation: that laws claiming to protect nature can restrict the living practices through which communities sustain knowledge, autonomy and relation to place.