Ajami - 2009

Movie #137
4 Stars

When their uncle wounds an important clan member, 13-year-old Nasri (Fouad Habash) and his older brother, Omar (Shahir Kabaha), fear he has put their whole family in terrible danger in this moving, Oscar-nominated drama set on the West Bank. A truce is arranged, but Omar must start selling drugs to pay the fine he now owes. Meanwhile, a number of other locals struggle to negotiate the political and social tinderbox of Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood.

Cast: Fouad Habash, Nisrine Rihan, Elias Saba, Youssef Sahwani, Abu George Shibli, Ibrahim Frege, Scandar Copti, Shahir Kabaha, Hilal Kabob, Ranin Karim

Director: Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani



Filming locations:
Ajami District, Jaffa, Israel
Lod, Israel
Nablus, Palestine
Tel Aviv, Israel

When I was watching this film I could tell that it was authentic. It was co-directed by an Israeli and a Palestinian..that in itself should say enough. As a whole, the film's theme is relatively simple...in a region where you are defined by your religion, hatred effects each individual person, no matter what family you come from. The reason I though relatively high of this movie was because it could have easily turned into a political movie and tried to place the blame of a certain group. Instead, the film simply looks at the lives of different people and the effects that group hatred has on individuals.
















The only shortfall of this movie may be its intricacy. It was often hard to follow each characters part. The film is split into chapters that are not in chronological order. Each chapter focuses on a different character. Even though all the characters are eventually connected, in the end I wished I had gotten to know each character a little more. I would highly suggest reading the plot before seeing a movie like this...solely in order to get a sense of the characters.












Overall Recommendation: If you are interested in Palestine and Israel..check it out. If you have no idea about the relationship between the two then I would stay away.

Trivia (courtesy of imdb):

• Israel's official submission to 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010.
• It took filmmakers Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti 7 years to make this film.
• The scene where the cops drive around and someone tries to sell them stolen red shoes, was not staged. They were actually shooting in the car and were interrupted by that man. As the actors used to be actual cops, they reacted like they would, and later the filmmakers decided to keep that scene.
• Most of the scenes in this film are improvised. Often the actors didn't even know what's going to happen. Link this trivia None of the actors in this film had prior experience in acting.