Academy Award Nominee: Best Foreign Film

AJAMI

SHOWTIMES

In an all-too rare creative act: an Israeli filmmaker and a Palestinian filmmaker have teamed together to create a powerful film. It is a complex weave of people and events that are triggered when a member of a poor Muslim family kills a member of a powerful clan. The film unreels in almost Godardian fashion: the time line is not sequential, but it all adds up in the end. The strength of the film rests in the powerful emotions of the people trapped in the conflict. Efforts at a settlement reveal the intersecting drama of life amidst Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the tragic arena of present day Palestine. The setting is Jaffa, located just on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. No concrete barrier walls separate the two communities, but tension bristles as the two peoples live separate lives under the Israeli occupation. In the absence of formal government the extended family is a key institution that serves as the basic legal entity. In the film the go-between between the poor and powerful families is a Palestinian Christian family whose daughter is in love with a youth in the threatened family. An Israeli policeman’s family is drawn into the conflict when a son is killed in the crossfire. What the film reveals is the difficulty on all sides in finding a humane and reasonable solution in a situation that is still ruled on all sides by the interplay of strict ancient codes of belief and behavior. --Vic Skolnick

Israel, 2009, 120 min., color, In Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles

Click HERE for trailer and official website.