“For over a decade, whenever I’ve asked Palestinian grassroots leaders about the models of inspiration that they draw on, they’ve consistently pointed me towards the First Intifada,” director Julia Bacha told us in a soon-to-be-published interview. She learned “that women played a key leadership role in a strategic and disciplined nonviolent movement, and that most of their stories had never been told.” Her upcoming documentary “Naila and the Uprising” tells these important stories, some of which are touched on in a new trailer that we’re premiering exclusively.

Set to make its world premiere at this year’s DOC NYC film festival, “Naila and the Uprising” centers on on Naila Ayesh, an activist who played an instrumental role in the First Intifada, “the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history,” the film’s official synopsis details. “When the uprising broke out in the late 1980s, Naila was living in Gaza. Faced with a choice between love, family, and freedom, she embraced all three, joining a clandestine network of Palestinian women in a movement that forced the world and Israel to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time.”

While the trailer focuses on Ayesh, we hear from other voices in the movement as well. “All problems coming up at the governmental level like education, health… we’d set up local committees to address them,” activist Azza Qassem recalls. “The women’s organizations would work in lieu of a full government that organized people’s lives.” Another activist, Sama Aweidah, adds, “We can’t be free as women unless we are in a free country. And even if we’re free of the occupation, we can’t know freedom as long as we’re subjugated in our own society.”

Bacha’s previous credits include “Encounter Point,” “Budrus,” and “My Neighbourhood.”

“Naila and the Uprising” will premiere at DOC NYC on November 12 and screen at the IDFA in Amsterdam later this month. Check out the trailer and poster for the film below.