 | Portland Film Fest Review: Ajami  | The Middle East is such a powder keg that we've come to assume every film from that region will be ABOUT the fact that it's a powder keg. Ajami is what you'd expect in that regard, but in nearly every other way it's a surprise, a bold and serious film about the frail threads that keep -- or fail to keep -- a society from falling apart. The title refers to a rather sketchy neighborhood in the Israeli city of Jaffa, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live uneasily with each other. To begin with, a teenager is gunned down outside his house. Our narrator, a young boy named Nasri (Fouad Habash), lives next door and reports that the intended victim was his 19-year-old brother, Omar (Shahir Kabaha), a decent young man who became a target for a Bedouin group only because Omar's uncle shot one of them. Sure, the guy was trying to rob Omar's uncle's restaurant, but that' s not considered a valid reason for shooting him. And so it goes. Abu Elias (Youssef Sahwani), a powerful godfather type who... - mediamage | |
0 коммент.:
Отправить комментарий