Israeli Film Review

So I am an avid fan of Israeli cinema. I was lucky to grow up seeing a lot of foreign films with my avid cinemateque-obsessed father and a good percentage of them were Israeli. I have taken two Israeli cinema themed classes now and love to discover new movies. One movie that I recently saw was Ajami. The movie was released in 2009 so I am a little late in discovering the film, but I loved it so much that I had to write about it. 

I could not help but compare the film to the American movie Crash in that Ajami consists of five separate stories that ultimately collide and are neatly woven together. The characters are all set in Yafo in the Ajami neighborhood. A couple of things make this movie incredibly remarkable, though. For one, the film is a collaboration between a Jewish and Christian Arab-Israeli director. Secondly, all of the actors in the film are actually not actors. In this sense, it is a "non-film" and it heightens the sense of realism and grittiness of the drama of the film. I really enjoyed the movie when I first watched it, but after learning about the story behind the film, I had a greater appreciation for the value and quality of the film.

The directors had the actors- who all are residents of this neighborhood- be tutored by acting coaches for a year prior to filming in which they would practice scenes that were similar to the ones that they would be shooting for the film. In fact, all of the scenes in the movie are improvised. The actors are given a small synopsis of what is expected and then they went from there, without ever truly knowing what the scene- or even the film- was even about. This is where the editing of the film becomes critical to the overall delivery and finished product of the film. 

Another fascinating facet of the movie is that it was shot in a non-linear and non-chronological order. This helps both heighten the drama and challenges you as the viewer. Judgements that you make about certain characters turn out to be completely false- which leads to a greater dialogue. What are the judgements that we are making on certain people in real life based on our limited interactions or understandings? It causes us to question all of the things that we do not see, and therefore we can to begin to comprehend how unreasonable and even ridiculous our judgements can be. 

Directors Scandar Copti (L) and Yaron Shani 

Also fascinating about the film is how little of the narrative is dedicated to the actual Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict itself plays a role in the film as it affects the lives of all the characters, it is just not a central role. It seems odd that a joint collaboration between and Israeli Arab and an Israeli Jew would make no overt reference to the conflict, and yet in another way it does not. The film is more of a human narrative and although there are glimpses into how the conflict interjects itself into the every day lives of the characters, it is not the focal point of the film- which makes it somehow even more profound and dramatic.