Chronologically scattered, the film is grounded by a young man named Omar (Shahir Kabaha) though he does not act as the film's agent of morality nor does he work as a filter the way Rocket did in City of God, a blatant influence. Omar is the intended target of a hit that takes the life of a teenager in the film's opening moments, narrated by his younger brother Nasri (Fouad Habash). Marked as part of retaliation for a Bedouin criminal's death, Omar meets with the powerful Abu-Elias (a fantastic Youssef Sahwani) and later brokers a deal to end the retaliation plot in exchange for a five-figure buy-out.
Jobless and desperate, Omar considers drug-dealing with his checkpoint-jumping friend Malek (Ibrahim Frege) and purchases a gun in the hopes of garnering the freedom to walk outside without fear. Omar will later tangle with Dando (Eran Naim), a grieving cop and loving father searching for his brother, and with Abu-Elias, an Israeli Christian, over his daughter Hadir (Ranin Karim). Scandar Copti, one of the film's co-directors and co-writers, treats himself to the role of Binj, a suave, pot-smoking friend of Omar's who is trying to move to Tel Aviv to live with his Jewish girlfriend.
These connections, however bountiful and familiar, rarely come across as contrived in such a serendipitous manner as Crash or Babel, reinforcing the film's rich authenticity. Co-directed and co-written by Copti, an Israeli Arab, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew, the film offers a take on modern Israel that suggests hope yet sidesteps the bleeding-heart rhetoric that has made the glut of contemporary Israeli cinema stiff or soggy. Like the recent Gomorrah, Ajami, a (gasp!) deserving Oscar nominee for best foreign picture, is not humbled or swayed by tradition and yet its characters are, giving it a thoroughly of-the-moment urgency. It is also worth mentioning that the uniformly excellent cast is made up primarily of non-professionals.
Ajami joins a dismayingly select group of Israel films -Waltz with Bashir, Jellyfish, Late Marriage and the upcoming Lebanon can be counted in the ranks -- that don't present Israel's volatile landscape as a political situation to be arbitrated over by intellectuals but rather as an inflection in everyday life. Existence, it turns out, does not get put on hold after an American cover story is printed. Themselves reaching across a wide social, political and religious divide, Copti and Shani have taken a stylish and important step towards forming a more compelling, bravely engaging portrayal of a country in turmoil without disregarding its hypocrisies, corruption and seemingly never-ending suffering.
Aka Russoun.
