Israel and Palestine in a whole new light (and genre): Sameh Zoabi's TEL AVIV ON FIRE

What a low-key delight is the new genre-melding movie, TEL AVIV ON FIRE. Taking on the Israel-Palestine conflict -- which we've now seen in just about every manner one would imagine possible, from documentaries such as the questing/philosophic (David Hare's Wall), historical (Colliding Dreams) and the bring-us-together sort (In the Land of Pomegranates) to narrative thrillers (The Little Drummer Girl, either version), family sagas (The Other Son), love stories (Omar) and sex-tryst films (the recent Reports on Sarah and Saleem) -- it provides quite the new perspective.

The genre we have not seen much of regarding this particular subject is comedy. To which you might immediately respond, "And for good reason, dummy!" Until you've viewed the movie under consideration here, that is.

As written and directed by Sameh Zoabi (shown at right), Tel Aviv on Fire might best be described as shambling -- which is not simply deliberate but a huge part of its charm. The film starts slowly and moves even more so. Yet that quiet, unhurried pace builds continually into something near amazing: funny, feisty, satiric, ironic and quite delightful. At film's end TrustMovies was in a state of sheer joy at its underhanded accomplishment of casting the kind of light on this more than 70-year conflict that both upends it and forces you to view it differently.

Even the film's seemingly incendiary title (which doubles as the name of a Palestinian soap opera that is also quite popular with the women of Israel) is part of the fun here. Our hero, a shamblin' man named Salam (Kais Nashif, above), who works as a low-end go-fer at that soap opera which his uncle produces, in order to get back into the affections of his old girl-friend, as well as gain faster thoroughfare at the Palestinian checkpoint, tell a fairly minor fib -- he claims to be a writer on the soap -- which results in his liaison with a Israeli military officer (Yaniv Biton, below) that actually does lead him into that writer's position.

What happens after gets sillier, funnier and much more productive in terms of irony and even depth of perspective, as everyone from the cast, director, original writer, Salam's ex-girlfriend (the lovely Maisa Abd Elhadi, below, left), the lead actress in the soap (a very funny Lubna Azabal), and that military officer's wife all become involved in the goings-on.

One of the small but piquant joys of the film is how this Palestinian soap opera seems different in scale yet all too redolent of soaps around the world. Ditto how love stories resort to such similar schemes to work themselves out. And, yes, how the male ego -- whether Israeli, Palestinian, or any other culture/nation -- proves every bit as tender and typical as you might expect.

The movie may be low-key, but it's an absolute triumph in just about every way -- never more so than when it addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without violence yet head-on, dead-on and with such unalloyed precision and delight.

From the Cohen Media Group, running 97 minutes, in Arabic and Hebrew (with English subtitles for both), Tel Aviv on Fire, after opening on the coasts earlier this month, hits South Florida this Friday, August 23. In Miami, look for it at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, in Hollywood at the  Cinema Paradiso, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters; and at the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth. Wherever you live around the USA, to see if the film is playing anywhere near you, click here.

Cam Christiansen's animated film of David Hare's thoughtful, rigorous play, WALL

The Israel/Palestine situation, with emphasis on the 435-mile long wall that helps divide the two peoples/nations, is the subject of the beautiful, sad, moving and thought-provoking new animated film, WALL, written for the screen by David Hare and based upon his 2009 play of the same name.

As animated and directed by Cam Christiansen (shown above, right, with Mr. Hare) in black/white/gray tones to which but a trace of color is very occasionally added -- only toward the conclusion do we get a riot of gorgeous color, via the graffiti that decorates the Palestinian side of the wall -- the film's loose yet rich visuals seem to TrustMovies an excellent complement to the very-much-worth-hearing ideas and arguments presented here.

Playwright Hare, who narrates a good deal of the movie, knows better than to simply take the expected left-leaning stance toward the whole situation, in which the "solution" of the wall has proven to be every bit as much of a problem. According to the International Court of Justice, the wall is contrary to international law, yet we see an animated version of the discotheque suicide bombing that was a major precursor to the wall and can understand why it has been built.

The movie is a journey, both geographically (inside the wall and in the Palestinian-occupied area outside) and emotionally/intellectually via the thoughts and ideas of a number of people we meet (Israeli and Palestinian), during which we come to better understand the reason for and the results (some of them perhaps unintended) of the wall.

As you might expect from Hare, the "take" on all this is measured, low-key, intelligent and necessarily problematic. As one of many speakers we hear from during the course of the film, a presumably left-leaning Israeli, notes early on, "Eighty per cent of the terror attacks against Israel have stopped since the wall. Am I not meant to be pleased by this?!" Yes. But.

For the Palestinians who must earn their living, most of whom we must assume are law-abiding and peace-loving, the wall means daily injustice writ large, via the checkpoints through which they must pass, usually waiting in impossibly long lines, often deliberately kept in that state. Does it really come down to death via terror or hardship via the wall. As Hare notes, the first is irreversible; the second, while reversible, has so far not been.

From famous Israeli writer David Grossman and a Palestinian taxi driver to a Hamas torture technique used against those suspected of informing and our arrival in the huge but now-barely-there city of Nablus -- the animation for which is simply stunning -- this journey is a consistently compelling one.

The finale, by the way, is a supreme example of art triumphing over oppression -- even if only in our minds and hearts. Ctrl + Alt + Delete indeed.

Wall, a National Film Board of Canada release that runs just 81 minutes, has its theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, April 3, in New York City at Film Forum for a one-week run. The entire run is being shown free of charge, by the way, thanks to the generosity of the Ostrovsky Family Fund. Tickets are available via the Film Forum box-office on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of show only.

WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER: Amos Gitai's further exploration of Israel and Palestine

He's been doing this for quite some time. With 62 credits under his belt, writer-director-documentarian Amos Gitai has been tackling the fraught question of the creation of the state of Israel and the yet-to-be-created (in our modern era) state of Palestine, along with so many other questions involved in Jewish and Arab life, for 44 years now. And yet the world -- especially that section of the middle east known as The West Bank, the Gaza Strip and certain other surrounding locations -- seems no closer to Middle east/Israel-Arab peace than 70 years ago when the state of Israel came into being.

Mr. Gitai, shown above, who gave us the 2016 amazement Rabin, the Last Day, now turns his attention to the continuing struggle for Arab rights in (what is now) the state of Israel. His new film, WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER, is a kind of series of video (or, for the older examples, filmed) "snapshots" of interviews with various individuals or groups mostly working toward peaceful and fair solutions to the conflict. It chronicles these from at least 1994 onward till very recently.

We see and hear Rabin, of course, and realize all over again what a huge loss this leader's assassination meant to the peace process. We also witness an interview with Arabs in Gaza from 1994 and watch in surprise as they single out Yasser Arafat as a traitor and betrayer for his attempt at working toward peace.

More current and unsettling, however, are the little interviews to which we're privy that involve everyone from young Arab men to a not-yet-adolescent Arab boy, above, who speaks with great desire and expectation of becoming a martyr. Gitai tries to help the boy see perhaps some other possibilities. But no, nothing can compare to this one!

We see a clip of the fine organization Breaking the Silence and, about a half-hour in, we meet an Israeli journalist who offers up the most damning and difficult things regarding Israel's expected and far too immediate future. Parents -- both Palestinian and Israeli (shown at bottom)-- who have lost their children to this violence bond and share their sorrow in one of the documentary's strongest scenes, and when Gitai speaks with a group of Arab men, it may remind you of similar discussions from the recent doc, In the Land of Pomegranates.

We hear from Knesset members, past and present -- one pro-peace, the other (to my mind, at least) sleazily pro-Israeli dominance at any cost. Then, finally and most surprisingly, we meet a couple of "settlers" (below) who -- oh, my god -- seem to actually want peace. The movie is definitely weighted toward peace and justice, for all the good that would seem to be doing at this point in history.

One of the most unfair and unnecessary injustices is shown us in a scene involving a hugely helpful and quite necessary school for Bedouin children (below) that the "settlers" are trying to close down. While there is not a whole lot here that hasn't been seen, heard or considered at some point along the way, Gitai's doc makes clear that it remains absolutely necessary to keep trying to bring an end to the injustice and violence that has plagued Israel/Palestine over the past half century and longer.

The movie closes with shots of a lovely carousel spinning around, and with an event that includes food, music and dance and brings together Arabs and Israelis. But just as with climate change, and as that journalist mentioned earlier points out, for the state of Israel there is but ten years -- at best -- remaining before the "point of no return" has been reached.

From Kino Lorber and running just 88 minutes, West of the Jordan River opens tomorrow, Friday, January 26, in New York City at the new Quad Cinema.

Elsewhere? I would hope so, but according to the film's web site, no further playdates around the country seem to be scheduled., Eventually, one hope we'll be able to see the film via streaming and DVD.

Israel & Palestine again in Hava Kohav Beller's remarkable and demanding documentary, IN THE LAND OF POMEGRANATES

We're only three days into the new year and already we've got an extraordinary documentary that, for anyone genuinely interested in and/or concerned with the seemingly intractable Israel/Palestine conflict, becomes an immediate must-see.

Hava Kohav Beller's (the filmmaker is pictured at right) IN THE LAND OF POMEGRANATES is a two-hour-and-five-minute trip into the minds and hearts of  a group of young people -- some Palestinian, some Israeli -- who spend time together in Germany as part of the Vacation from War project that has been going on, I believe, since around 2002. They meet and spend a good deal of time asking each other pertinent and very difficult questions about how each views "the other." These questions, along with their answers will prove about as thought-provoking and uneasy-making as you can imagine, but they will also enable you understand and appreciate the difficulty of this ongoing situation in ways I believe you won't have been able to experience previously. And certainly not in the manner you do here.

The Arabs and Jews you meet in this doc come from all sorts of backgrounds and attitudes. What unites them is their genuine attempts to see things with as much honesty and understanding as they are capable.

None of them are capable of as much as one might want, but then, neither perhaps are you or I. This is something else the film brings home, as we viewers begin to struggle as much as do the kids to find our own way home -- via history and the need to see the reality of what exists now, and what can be done to change or at least ameliorate things.

Interspersed with the young folk's discussions are three other documentary "stories" each complete with its own set of characters we follow for awhile. One of these involves a former cameraman who himself was wounded badly and evidently permanently traumatized as a victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber om a public bus. We meet him and his wife (she is shown below), and learn how they and their children have managed to endure the aftermath of all this -- not, it turns out, by remaining as a family.

We also watch a young Palestinian mother bring her small son who is sick with a heart blockage on a lengthy trip to an Israeli hospital, where doctors will operate and try to save him.

Finally we spend some time with an Israeli woman (above) who is trying to raise her family while living on the cusp of the violence on what seems to be practically the border between territories. These stories each bring us into the conflict -- but in quite differing ways.

Ms Beller's film is weighted, I think, toward Israel -- not so much by making the state right or wrong, but via Israel's being in control, as it has always been since its creation more than a half century ago. These three stories that we become privy to all somehow place Israel in prominence. In one, an Israeli is the great victim, in another the Israeli doctor is the hero who saves the Palestinian child, and in the third, the Israeli family is simply trying live/coexist (the final scene, in which the children talk about sending lanterns across the border -- and what might arrive were the other side to send them back again -- is priceless).

I wish Ms Beller had been able to give us a fully Palestinian story taking place in the occupied  territory, but perhaps this was not possible. We do get stories from our Palestinian young people (just as we do tales from the young Israelis), but this is not quite the same thing.

Otherwise, though, the movie does a splendid job of forcing us to consistently confront both sides of the issue and to see things from the alternative viewpoint. It is moving and surprising, even occasionally funny, but always thoughtful and humane. (Its title, by the way, refers both to that fruit grown in Israel and to its euphemism/nickname for the hand grenades so often used against Israelis.)

From First Run Features, In the Land of Pomegranates, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, opens this Friday, January 5, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and will be part of the Westchester Jewish Film Festival in Pleasantville ,New York, come March 13. I hope there will be many other locations added in the near future, as well.

Jessica Habie's unusual MARS AT SUNRISE tackles the Israel/Palestine problem via "art"

Movie-makers have approached the thorny and seemingly insoluble and unforgiving Israel/Palestine situation in so many different ways -- from unusual love stories like Thierry Binisti's A Bottle in the Gaza Sea to Elia Suleiman's marvelously elusive The Time That Remains to Lorraine Levy's poignant, kids-switched-at-birth movie The Other Son to Michael Mayer's fine GLBT thriller Out in the Dark (there are plenty of other good films simply too numerous to mention here) -- that it is both a pleasure and a surprise to welcome one that approaches the situation via art. MARS AT SUNRISE, the new film from Jessica Habie, is both about art and itself an "art film" -- full of symbols, mystery, impressionism and the surreal.

Ms Habie, shown at right and who also wrote the screenplay, offers up the "plot" situation in a fairly straightforward manner that gives us decent entry into things. An artist and school teacher named Khaled (the ubiquitous Ali Suliman, shown below and most recently seen here in Lone Suvivor and The Attack) is being displaced from his home and art studio in what is suddenly an "occupied-so-no-questions-asked" territory. He doesn't want to leave -- his explanation to his class  (below) regarding why he must go and the different colored visas that reflect this makes a wonderful scene -- and so he stays until he is forcibly ejected by the Israeli military.

The officer in command -- played as an angry, vicious and sad young man by talented newcomer Guy Elhanan, below -- begins by being rude and nasty to Khaled (and to his art) then goes on to imprison and torture the poor guy, after of course demanding that he work for Israel as a spy.

Yes, this situation sets up a rather definitive victim/aggressor scenario. But wait. While our sympathy rather must go with the displaced Palestinian, Ms Habie has more on her mind than simply this. By weaving into her movie so much art and "art," taking us from the real to the surreal, from fantasy to wish fulfillment, from the impressionistic to the hard-edged, she makes us understand that, no matter who seems to hold the power cards, we have two victims here.

The filmmaker's shots are often beautiful and usually meaningful; only occasionally do they fall into what might be seen as pretentious. I think we can live with a little pretension, in any case, when an artist -- which Habie definitely is -- attempts to come to terms with a subject this difficult. (She certainly hands us a better movie than did Julian Schnabel with his pretty dismal and ham-fistedly obvious Miral.)

Habie's combination of art, music and poetry, along with lush and beautifully framed visuals in service to a relatively simple story works well enough to divert us and make us think and connect during her film's short (just 75 minutes) running time.

Sure, there are a few things I'd like to have changed: I'd give Mr Suliman a better wig, for instance; and maybe have dubbed the rather unpleasant middle-eastern valley girl voice of the lovely actress seen at the film's beginning and then off and on throughout. (This young woman sounds as though she could greatly benefit from one of the Lake Bell character's vocal-training sessions seen at the conclusion of the fabulous In a World...)

But these are quibbles against what is a most worthwhile attempt to create art, meaning and change out of continuing injustice. Mars at Sunrise (which I take to be a title of one of Khaled's art works) is an unusual and engaging experience and one of the first of its kind to come out of the middle east that I, at least, have so far seen.

The movie -- from Canada/Palestine/USA, 75 minutes,  unrated, in DCP, in Arabic, English and Hebrew with English subtitles -- opens this Friday in New York City at the Quad Cinema, and elsewhere soon, I hope.

In Thierry Binisti's A BOTTLE IN THE GAZA SEA, Israel and Palestine meet (via France)

It has been but two months since the most recent and marvelous Israel-and-Palestine movie -- The Other Son from Lorraine Levy -- opened in the U.S. Now comes the second such -- A BOTTLE IN THE GAZA SEA -- and it, too, is from a French filmmaker. Some distance -- physical, and perhaps moral and emotional -- coupled with great empathy and skill, it seems, enables these filmmakers to address a subject so fraught with history, anger, hope and peril that you'd have to be a little crazy to want to get near it.

Like Levy's movie, "Bottle" (directed and co-written (with Valérie Zenatti) by Thierry Binisti, who is shown at left) takes off from a striking premise: The film opens with a terrorist attack in Israel, unseen but heard against the black screen. We see but a brief moment of the result of this attack before we begin to be immersed in the life of a French/Jewish high school girl, Tal, who has moved with her family to Israel, where her brother now serves in the Israeli army and has agreed to toss a sealed bottle with a message written by his sister into the sea. And yes, while the "message-in-bottle" movie is old hat, setting it in Israel/Palestine makes it live anew. (This was also quite true of the premise of The Other Son.)

No sooner have we heard this premise than we begin imagining the outcome. Sure, the bottle will be found by a Palestinian (the fellows above, as a matter of fact) and thus set up an immediate "dilemma" leading to what? A kind of middle-east Romeo & Juliet? Yet this premise of Bottle  turns out to be a great one in the hands of these filmmakers because nothing is imagined nor played for simple cliché and easy accommodation. This is tricky territory, trod many times already but rarely, as is also true with The Other Son, so well.

What makes this movie so special is the care it takes to keep its characters real -- at the same time as it continues to probe the situation around them, both familial and national -- while keeping open the lines of communication between the two. And isn't open communication, despite a continuing barrage of horror, one key to solving seemingly insoluble territory/occupation disputes, whether they be in the Middle East or Ireland or Quebec?

So much is going on above and below the surface of this movie that we cannot help but be riveted. And the fact the M. Binisti bites off approximately as much as he can (and does) chew is of immense help. This Bottle is a love story of sorts, but no more than it is a family story -- two families, two nations -- and the writers/director keep their story well-proportioned, with loose ends tightened up only as much as reality might allow.

All the performances are fine but it is the two lead actors who bring the film to fruition: Agathe Bonitzer's Tal (above) is somewhat mature for her 17 years but full of life and hope and questions, while Mahmud Shalaby's Naïm (below) is initially angry and provocative as the Palestinian young man (he's only 20) who is slowly made aware of some possibilities -- and yes, these are not perhaps probable but they are possible -- for change in personal status, as well as the larger picture. These two are just smart enough and naive enough to be quite real and affecting.

Mister Shalaby, by the way, is a much more versatile actor that you might realize, as he also played the brother of one of The Other Sons, as well as that sexually-troubled singer in Free Men. He's an actor to watch -- for all kinds of good reasons. In the supporting cast, most recognizable to me are the always fine Hiam Abbass as Naïm's widowed mother (shown at bottom, left) and Jean-Philippe Écoffey as Tal's father (at right, below).

Full of small bits of surprise that could, under other circumstances, bring its people closer, but here would more likely separate them further, the movie is remarkably nuanced in the treatment of characters and the connections that bind or break them.

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, another first-class film distributed by Film Movement, opens in New York City this Thursday, January 3, at the JCC, and on Friday, January 4, at the Quad Cinema. I would hope other venues around the country will be forthcoming. Click here to see any currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters.