Lost lives

Ajami
15, Key Cities

This week I’m reviewing an independent foreign film of the kind which is possibly only showing in a cinema several miles away from you, but do not complain, as the walk will do you good and also put colour in your cheeks. This film is Ajami, and while it is set in one of those male-dominated communities defined by crime, violence and drug-taking and I am growing weary of films about male-dominated communities defined by crime, violence and drug-taking (Gomorrah, A Prophet, and so on) I am happy to forgive it because the sun is out, which always makes me cheerful, and because there are no vuvuzelas in it, which has to be good. Also, it is exceptional, and well worth the walk.

Written and directed by Scandar Copti, a Palestinian Israeli, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew, the film takes its name from a small neighbourhood in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, where the crime and unemployment rates are high, and religious conflict is rife. Jews, Arabs, Christians and Muslims all live here and feel no need to rub along. This is not a film promoting the idea of peaceful co-existence. It isn’t about teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony (minus vuvuzelas, obviously). Instead, its tone is one of regret; regret for such sectarian divide, the mentality it fosters, the futility of it and the lives so needlessly lost.

There are no actors. Copti and Shani workshopped 300 members of the actual community, over a period of ten months, and cast those whose own lives best meshed with the characters they had in mind. Each character has his own story, and each story intertwines with the others, but in ways that are not immediately apparent, as the narrative shifts back and forth in time.