The Encampments Review: How Butler Lawn Became a Global Symbol

From the first light breaking over Butler Lawn, “The Encampments” plants you in a green expanse dotted with canvas tents and handmade banners fluttering in a cool morning breeze. Directed by Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman and released by Watermelon Pictures after its CPH:DOX debut, the film tracks a twelve-day occupation at Columbia University that began in spring 2024.

Students, driven by repeated dismissals of their calls to divest from defense contractors tied to Israel, transform that lawn into a visible stand for change. What follows is more than a campus protest: it becomes a global solidarity movement, with mirror encampments springing up at colleges from Los Angeles to London.

Here the stakes are personal. Viewers witness NYPD officers advancing on tents and the wrenching moment when ICE agents detain Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student whose backstory—born in a Syrian refugee camp and raised on stories of displacement—adds weight to every demand he makes.

The university’s response ranges from expelling leaders like Grant Miner to imposing new restrictions on peaceful assembly. Yet the filmmakers resist dramatizing these conflicts with grand gestures. Instead, they commit to raw, unedited scenes that honor the urgency of a collective effort pressing against institutional power.

Mapping the Protest’s Flow and Faces

Workman and Pritsker arrange their narrative along clear, sequential beats: initial petitions to the administration; the decision to pitch tents on Butler Lawn; escalating tensions with campus security; solidarity actions off campus; and, finally, the forceful raids that dismantle each camp. This classical arc gains freshness through personal vantage points.

Mahmoud Khalil anchors the film’s moral core. As lead negotiator, he recalls his family’s exile from Palestine and traces his path to Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Then there’s Sueda Polat, whose academic research in human rights becomes a tool for explaining why an Ivy League endowment matters far beyond classroom debates.

Grant Miner, once president of the student workers’ union, bridges faith identities—his Jewish heritage and commitment to Palestinian freedom—and pays a steep price when he’s expelled. Finally, voices like Maya Abdallah at UCLA illustrate how tactics shifted when tents appeared coast to coast.

Intercut throughout are archival clips of 1968 Vietnam-era occupations—reminders that campus dissent carries historical weight—and news-media snippets that label the protesters “radical” or “dangerous.” Fly-on-the-wall sequences inside tents put us in the midst of teach-ins and shared meals, while a haunting 911 call from six-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza pierces the soundtrack, underscoring what the students see as a fight for fundamental human rights.

Echoes and Power Plays

“Encampments” treats these events as a chapter in a long story of student activism. By paralleling the 2024 occupations with the 1968 sit-ins at Hamilton Hall, the film highlights how university leadership cycles between repression and later embrace. Archival testimony from Jamal Joseph—who once scaled Hamilton Hall’s façade—frames campus policing as a recurring tactic that ultimately backfires on institutional legitimacy.

At every turn, the documentary measures the tension between academic ideals and financial realities. Sueda Polat’s clear-eyed breakdown of Columbia’s investments in General Electric, Lockheed Martin and tech firms for surveillance systems reveals how endowment decisions carry moral weight far beyond Wall Street. Inside the encampment, students of diverse faiths share prayers and poetry, while angry counterprotesters hurl slurs at their tents. The tent city itself emerges as a symbol of both sanctuary and protest, invoking images of displaced communities worldwide.

News clips from commentators across the spectrum heighten this sense of contested narrative, and the protesters’ unedited testimonies serve as a running rebuttal. Yet as scenes of arrests and deportation hearings unfold, the film questions whether any single protest can fulfill its lofty aims or if each episode is destined to be outpaced by unfolding events.

Form and Feeling

Technically speaking, “The Encampments” embraces restraint. There is no swelling orchestral score; instead, moments of quiet—the rustle of tarps in wind, the murmur of campus life—mix with bursts of protest chants. Handheld camerawork places the viewer at eye level with activists, shifting between intimate close-ups in the tents and sprawling shots of riot-gear-clad officers marching across manicured lawns.

Editor Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi stitches together rapid cuts during confrontations and generous linger times on personal interviews, allowing emotional beats to unfold organically. Sound design relies on diegetic noise: the crackle of megaphones, shouted slogans, the distant thud of rubber bullets. Music appears sparingly—an acoustic guitar riff here, a cello note there—to punctuate key moments without steering the audience’s feelings.

Viewers encounter scenes of communal solidarity—shared meals under string lights, late-night poetry readings—juxtaposed with frames of tents ripped apart by authorities. The recording of Hind Rajab’s frightened plea echoes against these images, transforming student speeches into a broader rallying cry. By weaving these elements, the film immerses us in the collective energy of a movement and the personal stakes of those who dare to lead.

The Encampments had its world premiere at CPH:DOX on March 25, 2025, and was released in the United States on March 28, 2025.

Full Credits

Directors: Kei Pritsker, Michael T. Workman

Writers: Kei Pritsker, Michael T. Workman

Producers: Kei Pritsker, Michael T. Workman, Munir Atalla, Matthew Belen

Executive Producers: Macklemore, Hamza Ali, Badie Ali, Benjamin Becker

Cast: Mahmoud Khalil, Sueda Polat, Grant Miner, Maya Abdallah, Jamal Joseph

Director of Photography (Cinematographers): Kei Pritsker, Michael T. Workman, Craig Birchfield

Editors: Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi, Michael T. Workman

Composer: Katharine Petkovski