As civil war engulfs Jordan in 1970, Palestinian militant Leila Khaled attempts her second aircraft hijacking, becoming embroiled in one of the most dramatic episodes in aviation history. Through Khaled's final long-form interview, exclusive eyewitness testimony, rare archive and cinematic reconstruction, the film examines the human cost of conflict, revolution and exile through one of modern history's most contested figures.
Drawing on six years of international research, production and archive discovery, The Day the Sky Broke is a premium feature documentary examining the aircraft hijackings that transformed international aviation, global media and the modern Middle East through the experiences of those who lived them.
At the centre of the story is Leila Khaled, the world's first female aircraft hijacker and one of the twentieth century's most recognisable and controversial political figures.
More than fifty years after the events that made her an international icon, and now in the final years of her life, Khaled has granted what is expected to be her final long-form documentary interview. Her testimony provides a rare opportunity to revisit a defining chapter in modern history through the reflections of the woman who became its most enduring symbol.
The film traces Khaled's journey from childhood displacement to political radicalisation, through the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and the attempted hijacking of El Al Flight 219 a year later. That second operation, which left her accomplice dead and Khaled imprisoned, unfolded alongside the coordinated Dawson's Field hijackings and the events that would culminate in Black September, bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into unprecedented international focus and fundamentally reshaping global aviation security.
Khaled's perspective, however, is only one voice within a much broader historical record. The film reunites passengers, flight crew, diplomats, intelligence officials, military personnel, journalists and historians from every side of the conflict, assembling what is believed to be the most comprehensive collection of first-hand testimony ever gathered about these events. Their accounts are woven together with rare archive, original recordings and carefully crafted cinematic reconstruction to create an immersive historical narrative grounded in documented evidence.
Rather than asking audiences to reach a predetermined conclusion, The Day the Sky Broke explores how the same events can be remembered, justified and condemned in profoundly different ways by those who experienced them. It is ultimately a film about memory, identity, displacement and political violence, and about the enduring human consequences of decisions made more than half a century ago that continue to shape the world today.
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