EXCLUSIVE: Toronto-based distribution company New Mountain Films has acquired North American theatrical and streaming rights for Marjolein Busstra’s award-winning documentary House of Hope about a pacifist Waldorf school in the occupied West Bank.
The agreement was negotiated by Khaled Sabbour, founder and CEO of New Mountain Films, and Esther van Messel and Shiran Shmerling at Zurich-based international sales company First Hand Films.
Working with a Palestinian crew, including Dutch-Palestinian cinematographer Abu Mosab, Amsterdam-based filmmaker Busstra followed Manar and Milad, a couple who run a pacifist Waldorf elementary school in al-Eizariya, a Palestinian town on the outskirts of Jerusalem under pressure from Israel’s expansion of its illegal settlements.
Against this tinderbox backdrop, they strive to protect their students’ innocence and sense of possibility amid escalating regional conflict.
House of Hope world premiered at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam in 2025, and then went on to screen at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto this May. There, it won the Hot Docs Best International Feature Documentary award.
The award, which is supported Donner Canadian Foundation, qualifies the film for consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category at the 99th Academy Awards.
It is produced by Ruby Deelen and Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen for 100% Film in coproduction with Ossama Bawardi and May Jabareen for Palestine-based Philistine Films.
“House of Hope is exactly the kind of film that New Mountain was built to champion — a story with real stakes, told with craft, that deserves an audience beyond the festival circuit,” said Sabbour.
“What you think you know does not survive the ninety-one minutes,” added Annette Warring, President & COO of New Mountain Films. “Manar and Milad are not arguing with anyone. They are teaching children to read and to imagine, and watching them do it rearranges something.”
New Mountain Films will bring House of Hope to theatres in select major North American markets in mid-October 2026, ahead of its move to NM+, New Mountain’s purpose-driven streaming platform. The platform will convert audience watch-time on the title directly into charitable giving, extending the film’s impact well beyond its theatrical run.
