ISRAEL: Oscar nominated "Ajami" shows the gritty reality of Israel's Arab underclass

Record ID: 396248

  • Title: ISRAEL: Oscar nominated "Ajami" shows the gritty reality of Israel's Arab underclass
  • Date: 4th March 2010
  • Summary: JAFFA, ISRAEL (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (HEBREW) SHAHIR KABAHA WHO PLAYS OMAR, A YOUNG ARAB IN THE FILM WHO IS FORCED TO SELL DRUGS, SAYING: "The parts (of the film), one by one, they are the same as in reality. Whether it is a 19-year-old who goes to sell drugs - that exists, there are even younger kids (who sell drugs), maybe the movie was even a little subtle in
  • Embargoed: 19th March 2010 12:00
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  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Reuters ID: LVADGFNUMGEI78VA6WN34ITJZ6C2
  • Story Text: When the directors yelled "Action!" on the set of "Ajami", none of the actors had prepared lines or knew exactly what was to happen in their scene.
    Most of them had day jobs and had never appeared in a movie before. None knew how the low-budget drama would end. And no one imagined it would become Israel's third-straight nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.
    Co-directed by a Jew and a Christian Arab, the film was shot over 23 days in the mostly-Arab Ajami quarter in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, that has a reputation for poverty and violence.
    In raw cinema-verite, Ajami's intertwined storylines run along the fissures of an Israeli underclass riven by drugs, crime and ethnic prejudice.
    It follows a young Muslim who gets caught up in an Arab clan feud and his own forbidden romance with a Christian woman, a Jewish police officer in search of his missing soldier brother, and a Palestinian youth who sneaks into Israel for menial work.
    Director Yaron Shani worked on the movie for seven years with co-director Scandar Copti.
    "We showed love stories that cannot happen because of segregation, because a Muslim cannot be with a Christian, because a Jew cannot be with an Arab. we wanted to show how this segregation affects people's lives in this reality, in this, real people, and we also wanted to show how this segregation causes violence," Shani told Reuters Television in Jaffa.
    Their strategy, he said, was to find first-time actors with similar backgrounds to the characters and who would imbue the roles with real-life experience. Casting calls were posted around Ajami and relayed among residents through word of mouth. After nine months of acting workshops they were ready to shoot.
    "In every scene the actors went into something that they didn't know what was going to happen they didn't know anything about what they were supposed to do. They were in a very realistic and very real situation, and what you see is real emotions and real feelings and the words that people say come from their hearts, and not because it was written in a script," said Shani.
    Eran Naim, a retired Israeli police officer who served in the force for 16 years with no background in acting, plays one of the lead characters in the film.
    "I didn't act when it came to the police scenes. I did what I knew from the job I had for many years, I acted in response to a (police) call, or upon arrival to the incident with Arieh Tzipori (a character in the film who is murdered), in the most natural way, the same I would have done if I were at work," said Naim, 39, who in one scene is assaulted by a group of Arabs while trying to arrest their neighbourhood drug dealer.
    Most scenes were shot in one take, using multiple cameras, to preserve the sense of spontaneity. The dialogue is mainly in a gritty urban Arabic peppered with Hebrew. Half of the $1 million budget was raised in Germany, the rest in Israel.
    Shahir Kabaha, 25, who still works at his family's neighbourhood bakery, was cast as the protagonist who sees selling drugs as the only way he can help his family. He was brought by a friend to the acting workshops without knowing it was for a film.
    Kabaha says the situations depicted in the film are not a far cry from the harsh reality in the alleyways of Jaffa.
    "The parts (of the film), one by one, they are the same as in reality. Whether it is a 19-year-old who goes to sell drugs - that exists, there are even younger kids (who sell drugs), maybe the movie was even a little subtle in this respect."
    Top Israeli film critic Nachman Ingber told Reuters that "Ajami", "Waltz with Bashir", Israel's previous Academy award nominee and 2007's Oscar nomination "Beaufort" are products of a re-energised local film industry that has emerged in the past decade.
    "In the last ten years we witness the growth of a new generation, young people who studied cinema professionally, who know how to handle equipment, and know how to show the country as it is and people who talk about their own stories," Ingber said.
    Every young person in Israel's diverse culture, Ingber says, represents a conflict or a trauma which Israeli filmmakers are now showing in more personal and dramatic films.
    The Academy Awards will be held in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 7th.
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