Documentary Film

About Esther Hertog

Esther Hertog is a freelance anthropological documentary filmmaker, researcher and stills photographer.

Esther Hertog, born in 1978 in Amsterdam, grew up between the ages of 11 to 24 in Israel. She returned to the Netherlands to study Cultural Anthropology at Amsterdam University. Her student film ‘Ossama’s Dance’ about a gay male Palestinian belly dancer, screened at international film festivals. She later received an MA from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at Manchester University. In her studies she focused on nationalism, identity, education in relation to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.

After graduation Esther worked as camerawoman, researcher and editor on films in the Netherlands, the Middle East and Rwanda. In 2009 she started filming ‘Soldier on the Roof’. It took 3 years, 5 extended visits to Hebron, and extreme determination to make this film, The film was awarded with double IDFA prizes, various international prizes, and broadcasted Internationally.

Since 2013 Esther and her partner, Paul King, are filming ‘Through the Barricades’, every year, sometimes twice a year they live in Hebron for a long period to film the kids growing up. Esther participated at GreenHouse seminar 2015-2016 in which she developed the film further. As a result of the seminar Dutch TV broadcaster EO decided to produce the film together with Doxy producers in Amsterdam. In 2017 we received the NPO fund and pitched at the EBU forum in Sheffield. The film will be broadcasted end 2020.

Additionally she works for Dutch TV as a film researcher, producer and camerawomen, specialized in Israël and the Westbank.

By “standing in the shoes” of her protagonists – Esther sets out to capture the challenges, triumphs and comic life moments of real people in front of her camera.

For all her films Esther does the directing, camera, research, data management and partly the editing.