2026 Student Academy Awards Series Part 9: The Last People of Petra

The Last People of Petra, dir. Lara Dihmis

The third and final 2026 Student Academy Award winner in the documentary category is Lara Dihmis for her film The Last People of Petra. Lara is the 13th student coming out of the NYU News & Documentary program to be recognised for the prestigious Academy Award.

The film sheds light on the B'doul (also spelled Bedul / Bdoul) tribe who traditionally live in and around the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan. Following the World Heritage Committee 9th session in 1985 Petra was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which brought about the beginning of the displacement of its inhabitants.

The government built a small town nearby, outside the heritage site, for the people to migrate to, prompting a disruptive shift in their lifestyle. Before the shift many of the people in the tribe were farmers, raising animals and living off of the land, a requirement which was not accounted for when the new housing was constructed.Furthermore the site was recognised as one of The New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, which resulted in a big increase in tourism. In order to try and adapt to the situation a few of the natives took up tourism dependent trades such as souvenir sales. But the government continues to press the people to migrate away from the site, using legal actions like fines for practicing those trades and even going so far as to threaten jail sentences for the people still working or living on the land.

The film surfaces a very common struggle when it comes to heritage sites, where the local population go head to head with external forces: archeologists trying to excavate, document and preserve; local authorities staking claim to the land for the gain of the entity they represent. Everyone claims to be in the right, working for the best possible outcome, but it far too often comes at the cost of the weakest side which tends to be the individuals on site that also have the biggest potential loss. Dihmis does a really good job at highlighting the complexity of the issue by interviewing an archeologist currently working on the site and showing some footage, new and archival, of the government practices and proposed solutions. Meanwhile, making sure that the complexity does not come at the cost of showing the very real pain caused to the local tribe, which is far and away the focus of the documentary. That balance shows real maturity as a documentary film maker, and it is easy to see why the film was chosen as one of this year's finalists.

Review by: Robin Hellgren