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Articles |
Ajami' casts harsh light on
Israel's other Arab conflict
BY : JOSEPH KRAUSS
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ARTICLE (March 07 2010): In the mixed neighbourhood of the Israeli film "Ajami,"
Jews and Arabs rub shoulders on the same quiet, leafy streets, never knowing
when someone is going to draw a knife. The film, the third Israeli
production to be nominated for an Academy Award in as many years, offers a
rare look at the country's Arab minority, a fifth of the population often
overshadowed by the larger Middle East conflict.
"Most Israelis don't know what's going on in places like Ajami. Most of
their attention is drawn to the big conflict with the Palestinians who live
outside Israel," said Yaron Shani, 37, the Israeli co-director of the film.
The film, named for the Jaffa neighbourhood just south of Tel Aviv where it
takes place, follows several characters fiercely divided by clan, religion
and ethnicity as they are fatefully thrown together in Ajami's criminal
underworld.
"It shows you how deep the difference is, how segregated this reality is.
And when you live in this reality, it's not surprising that every once in a
while you see an outburst of horrifying violence," Shani said. There is the
main character Omar, an Israeli Arab teenager who peddles drugs to try to
pay off a blood feud with a Bedouin family. And Malek, a 16-year-old
Palestinian from the West Bank who sneaks into Israel illegally to earn
money to pay for life-saving surgery for his mother, who is in an Israeli
hospital.
Chance sets them on a collision course with Dando, an Israeli undercover cop
in search of his vanished brother, with the tragic course of events narrated
by Nasri, Omar's little brother. Here the Middle East conflict springs, not
from an age-old dispute over territory, but an infectious tribalism bred by
seething distrust and the need to defend boundaries - ethnic, religious and
familial - at all costs.
Shani and Israeli Arab co-director Scandar Copti, 34, cast local residents
instead of professional actors in all the roles and provided them with loose
scenarios instead of scripts. "They had the freedom to be themselves. The
scenes were totally spontaneous," Shani said.
During one scene Dando and other undercover cops go to arrest a drug dealer
and are surprised when several of his friends rush out to protect him. Shani
said the crew had to step in to break up the scuffle as things got out of
hand. "I felt like I was on the job ... I didn't act," said Eran Naim, 39,
who was cast as Dando after working as an Israeli policeman for 16 years.
"Ajami" is the third Israeli film in a row to be nominated for the Academy
Award for best foreign film, after "Beaufort" (2007) and the animated "Waltz
With Bashir" (2008), both war movies dealing with Israel's painful 1982-2000
occupation of southern Lebanon.
WE AREN'T ALL GANGSTERS The three are part of a string of international
successes for Israeli cinema, including the critically-acclaimed "The Band's
Visit" (2007) and "Lebanon" (2009) which took the top prize at the Venice
Film Festival. "The phenomenon of Israeli cinema is all over the place,"
said Eitan Green, a director and film professor at Tel Aviv University, who
links the rise in part to an increase in government subsidies for films in
the past 10 years.
"Although the perception of Israel around the world is not that sympathetic
now, you can make almost any kind of movie here," he said, including works
that are deeply critical of the Jewish state and its policies. Ironically,
while "Ajami" has been a hit in Israel, many Arab residents of the real-life
Ajami have been less thrilled with it.
"It only shows one side of the coin," said Samir Awad, a hardware store
owner who lives on the street where one of the scenes was filmed. "We aren't
all gangsters. We have doctors, lawyers, even judges." Residents, however,
do accuse Israeli police of heavy-handed treatment and racial profiling, and
last month two of director Copti's brothers were briefly detained after an
altercation with police.
Israel's 1.5 million Arab citizens, the descendants of Palestinians who
remained in the Jewish state after the 1948 Middle East war that followed
its creation, today make up 20 percent of the population. But they accounted
for 60 percent of murder victims in 2009, according to government figures.
And a study carried out by Israel's parliament found that Arabs make up 41
percent of murder suspects and 36 percent of both assault and robbery
suspects, a reflection of poverty and frustration rampant in their
communities. Shahir Kabaha, 25, who plays the main character Omar and has
lived in the area his whole life, said the film conveys the fragile nature
of the relative calm in Israel's mixed neighbourhoods.
"Everyone here lives a normal life, but at any moment something can happen
that changes everything," he said. "I've seen weapons drawn right in front
of me. I've seen drugs with my own eyes and I've seen people die with my own
eyes, people who had nothing to do with anything."
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010
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