Ajami by Scandar Copti & Yaron Shami

Omar’s uncle wounded a gangster and now the whole family lives in fear. Malek is a Palestinian refugee who works illegally in Israel. Binj is going to settle down with his Jewish girlfriend and that causes tensions amongst his Palestinian friends. Dando is an Israeli policeman who just lost his brother. Hadir and Omar love each other, but Hadir’s Christian family would never allow her to marry a Muslim. Different but deeply connected stories are intertwined in Ajami, the multiethnic neighbourhood of Jaffa, one of the oldest cities in the world. Hebrew and Arabic meet in the breakthrough of two directors whom history could very likely have turned into enemies: Scandar Copti is a Palestinian who lives in Israel; Yaron Shani is an Israeli.

Together they shot an intense, moving film that depicts a composite and dramatic reality wherein violence, drugs and a never-ending war win over everything else - but in which people still hold on to their hopes. The choice of dividing the film into 5 non-chronological chapters favours an analytical rather than emotional approach to the story, conveying a more realistic portrait of Ajami, symbol of all the beauty and the problems of multiethnicity, but also of the devastating degradation caused by the political situation.

Marta Musso