Ajami (film)

Ajami
Arabic-language Theatrical poster
Directed by	Scandar Copti Yaron Shani
Produced by	Moshe Danon Thanassis Karathanos Talia Kleinhendler
Written by	Scandar Copti Yaron Shani
Starring	Fouad Habash Ibrahim Frege Scandar Copti Shahir Kabaha Eran Naim
Music by	Rabih Boukhari
Cinematography	Boaz Yehonatan Yaacov
Editing by	Scandar Copti Yaron Shani
Release date(s)	22 May 2009 (2009-05-22) (Cannes)
Running time	120 minutes
Country	Israel
Language	Arabic Hebrew
Budget	$1 million
Box office	$2.2 million

Ajami (Arabic: عجمي‎; Hebrew: עג'מי‎) is a 2009 Arab/Jewish collaboration drama film. Its plot is set in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa.

Overview

Written and directed by Scandar Copti (a Palestinian citizen of the Israeli state, born and raised in Yafa) and Yaron Shani (a Jewish Israeli), Ajami explores five different stories set in an actual impoverished Christian-and-Muslim Arab neighborhood of the Tel Aviv - Jaffa metropolis, called Ajami. The many characters played by non-professional actors lend the story the feel of a documentary. The Arab characters speak Arabic among themselves, the Jewish characters speak Hebrew among themselves, and scenes with both Arab and Jewish characters are a naturalistic portrait of characters using both languages, as they would in real life. The film was co-produced by French, German and Israeli companies – Inosan Productions, Twenty Twenty Vision, Israel Film Fund, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, ZDF, Arte, World Cinema Fund.^[1]

In Israel the film was very well received, and won the Ophir Award for Best Film, defeating Golden Lion Award-winner Lebanon. It has been compared to Pier Paolo Pasolini's early films, and to more recent crime films such as City of God and Gomorra.

Ajami was the first predominantly Arabic-language film submitted by Israel for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for the award.^[2] It lost to El secreto de sus ojos (Argentina). It was the third year in a row that an Israeli film was nominated for an Academy Award.

Plot

There are five story lines which are presented in a non-linear and non-chronological fashion. Some of the events are shown multiple times from different perspectives. Impressions are created of characters, positive and negative, which, subsequently, turn out to be incorrect. A young Israeli Arab boy, Nasri, who lives in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, narrates the film.

As the movie opens, Nasri's neighbor is killed in a drive-by shooting while working on a car in the street. The hit man had intended to kill Nasri's older brother Omar, as revenge for Nasri's uncle's shooting and severely injuring of a Bedouin gang member and extortionist. A leading member of the Jaffa community, Abu Elias, brings Omar to a Bedouin court session, in which a "judge" decides that Omar has to pay tens of thousands of dinars - equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars - to end the chain of revenge killings of which he could be the next victim. A young Palestinian (from the area of Nablus), Malek, is illegally employed in Abu Elias's restaurant. and is desperate to make enough money for his mother's bone marrow transplant surgery. Omar has also another problem: he is Muslim and in love with Abu Elias's daughter, Hadir, who, we discover, is Arab Christian. Abu Elias, who owns the restaurant where Omar and Malek work) does not approve of their relationship. Binj (played by co-director Copti), a cook at the restaurant, is forced by his brother to hold drugs for him when a neighborhood dispute over bleating sheep results in the stabbing of a Jewish Jaffa neighbor. Binj's house is searched by the police, who are called away and do not find the drugs. When he is found dead and the house ransacked, it appears he was murdered. We later learn that Binj died of a drug overdose after throwing away the remaining drugs and replacing them with sugar. Malek, thinking the drugs are real, takes them and, with Omar, tries to sell them. Abu Elias learns of their plans and sets a trap so that Omar will be caught trying to sell the drugs and be arrested, thus ending the relationship with Abu Elias's daughter. Abu Elias fires Malek but does not want him to be caught in the trap, and warns him what is going to happen. Malek, not convinced, wants to go anyway because he needs the money for his mother's operation, therefore Abu Elias advises him to go along with Omar, but not touch the drugs, then the police will let him go. Omar's younger brother Nasri insists on accompanying Omar and Malek because he is worried that something will happen to Omar. When they get to the place where they will meet the "drug dealers" (in fact, the police), Nasri is told to stay in the car. At Malek's urging, Omar leaves his gun in the car. The officers discover the drugs are fake. One of the officers, Dando, sees Malek with a pocket watch that he thinks belonged to his brother Yoni (who had been murdered in what police take to be a "nationalist" killing) and suspects that Malek had a hand in killing him (in fact, Malek had bought the watch as a gift for Abu Elias). Nasri, who hadn't stayed in the car but followed behind Omar and Malek instead, sees Dando aiming his gun at Malek and, not realizing they are police, he shoots Dando and is then shot and killed by another officer. Thus, Nasri's dread of future tragedy, predicted at the beginning of the film, is fulfilled as the story arcs come together in the last scene.

Awards

• Cannes Film Festival:
  • Caméra d'Or - Special Mention (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani) (won)
• European Film Awards:
  • European Film Academy Discovery (nominated)
• Jerusalem Film Festival:
  • Best Full-Length Feature (won)
• London Film Festival:
  • Sutherland Trophy
• Ophir Award:
  • Best Film (won)
  • Best Director (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani) (won)
  • Best Screenplay (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani)(won)
  • Best Music (Rabih Boukhari) (won)
  • Best Editing (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani) (won)
• Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival:
  • Best Eurasian Film (won)
• Thessaloniki International Film Festival
  • Golden Alexander (won)
• 2010 Academy Awards:
  • Foreign Language Film (nominated)

See also

• 2009 in Israeli film

Notes

1. ^ Jewish-Arab crime film captures tensions, BBC, October 2009
2. ^ Brown, Hannah (2-2-2010), "‘Ajami’ nominated for Oscar", The Jerusalem Post, http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=167582 

References

• Ajami on Free TV Movie Database

External links

• Official website
• Ajami at the Internet Movie Database