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.
