A.O. Scott (16 May 2012)

You emerge from Ajami moved and also a little worn out, but mostly grateful for the heart, craft and intelligence the movie has shown.

Dan Lybarger (15 May 2012)

Ajami may be set in Israel, but at times it plays more like an American gangster drama. The film does address the ethnic and social tensions that run through the country, but it does so in a nuanced and refreshingly clear-eyed way.

Howard Schumann (13 May 2012)

One two three, open your eyes

"On the count of three you'll open your eyes and find yourself in adifferent place, one two three. Open your eyes." Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film at the 2010 AcademyAwards, the outstanding Israeli film Ajami makes clear the human costof decades of political and military strife between Jews and Arabs inthe neighborhood of Ajami in Jaffa, Israel. Here there is a seeminglyimpassible divide between Jews, Christian, and Muslims whose daily lifeoffers no escape from the realities of poverty, violence, andoppression. In Ajami, there are no heroes and no villains. Eachreligious and ethnic community is trapped in the same tunnel searchingfor a speck of light.Shot on location using mostly non-professional actors includingneighborhood recruits, directors Yaron Shani (an Israeli), ScandorCopti (a Palestinian), in their first feature, capture the look andfeel of a community in disarray with such remarkable detail and rawurgency that Ajami could easily be mistaken for a documentary. InShani's words, "It was essential that we delivered reality as it is,without exaggeration, in its complexity. We had to capture the reallanguage, the real people, the real mentality, the way people are." Thefilm is divided into five chapters, each one shot from a specificperspective and each adding an extra layer of tension. As the filmopens, 13-year-old Nasri (Fouad Habash) is prescient when he says "Iknow I can feel what is about to happen." Shortly thereafter, adrive-by shooting kills an innocent fifteen year old boy when he ismistaken for Nasri's older brother Omar (Shahir Kabaha). The shootingis in retaliation for the death of a member of their clan who waskilled by Nasri's uncle. Though a truce is reached with the Bedouins,aided by Abu Elias (Youssef Sahwani), a Christian community leader,Omar must pay them $57,000 to stop the fighting. In dire straits anddesperate for money, Omar falls into the underworld of drugs andviolence.Meanwhile, Malek (Ibrahim Frege), a sweet-faced 16-year-old Palestinianboy living in the Occupied Territories comes to Jaffa to find work atthe restaurant of Abu Elias. Fearful of being sent home because of hisillegal status, he works hard to try and pay for a bone marrowtransplant that may save his mother's life but his need for moneybrings him into Omar's circle. In another sub-plot, Hadir's (RaninKarim) relationship with Omar crosses religious lines (she is aChristian and he is a Muslim) and is adamantly opposed by her fatherAbu Elias who forbids her to ever see Omar again even though she pleadshow much she loves him.Events in the film come thick and fast: Bing, a wealthy Palestinian(Scandar Copti) wants to live with his Jewish girlfriend in Tel Avivbut a police raid looking for drugs puts an end to his plans, an angryIsraeli policeman named Dando (Eran Naim) searches for his missingbrother who was drafted into the Army and is feared to have been killedby the Arabs, a Jewish man is stabbed to death after complaining aboutthe noise from sheep kept by Palestinians living nearby. According toShani what unfolded, although broadly scripted, was spontaneous in itsdetails – the hostility and the anger were real.Ajami does not offer any easy explanations nor any solutions to theneighborhood's unrest. It does, however, illuminate a problem that manywould rather forget. The characters, like the hijacker Sandro in theBrazilian film Bus 174, are driven by circumstances to do terriblethings out of rage and futility. Neither Bus 174 nor Ajami justifiestheir actions, however, but makes them more comprehensible. Though thefilm is grim and strips away idealism, it has a universal quality thatbegins and ends with the lovely song Eshkenakum by Maher Halabi, musicthat could be appreciated by any culture. Ajami leaves the viewer withlittle to be hopeful about, but the fact that a Jew and an Arab couldcollaborate on an intelligent and passionate motion picture based inpart on their own experiences is an important step forward.Change, however, will not come easily to Israel. As one of thedirectors has said, "It's very, very hard to change things – especiallyfrom an ideological point of view. But…once you deliver differentmessages and things that surprise people and show them things in adifferent way and try to open their minds to things that they didn'tthink about or they never heard about before, you can make a differencein their perspective." Shani may be telling us that when you aretotally convinced that nothing is possible, it is but a short step toeverything is possible.

Emily S. Mendel (12 May 2012)

Ajami is a powerful crime drama in which all are heroes and all are villains.

Michael Phillips (12 May 2012)

Aside from its honesty, I just think it's a really gripping narrative.

Elizabeth Weitzman (12 May 2012)

Don't worry if you miss some details; this is the kind of movie that rewards a second viewing.

(28 April 2012)

powerful crime saga set among Israeli Arabs

SPOILER ALERT:This powerful movie takes place within the Israeli Arab community, mainly within the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa. It's in a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew -- sometimes the two blend within the same sentence. It begins with a gangland killing and ends in a tragic shootout.It takes some time to realize that the film is broken up into separate chapters that we the audience do not see consecutively. Thus only when the final chapter is complete does the whole picture come into focus. A fascinating addition to the DVD is a short documentary showing how the directors found the amateur actors who populate this movie and how they were able to coax such convincing performances from them, often working without a script.There are many interesting subtexts within this movie. We see the complicated interplay of different factions within the Palestinian community. A love affair between a Palestinian Christian girl and Muslim boy becomes a kind of doomed, Romeo and Juliet relationship. The Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian "undocumented workers" who sneak in from the West Bank view each other with mutual distaste. An Arab in a relationship with an Israeli Jewish woman from Tel Aviv is seen by his friends as a traitor. All these people live side by side -- but separately.An Israeli police officer, effectively portrayed by a former policeman, seems to behave with inexplicable brutality -- until it becomes clear there is a reason for that too.There is something almost Shakespearean about this movie. The characters are trapped in a sequence of events that none of them can stop, leading to an inevitable tragedy. Everyone behaves with perfect logic from their own viewpoint -- and the outcome is terrible.

Jeff Vice (27 April 2012)

Contrivances bring this bunch together, and the plotting gets a little too complicated and convoluted. Luckily, these are characters that feel real, whose problems are relatable.

(22 April 2012)

Best Israeli film made to date

In the genre of the great Brazilian urban films City of God and City Below, and genius Italian neo-realism cinema of Rosselini and DeSica, this is a gripping Israeli neo-realistic crime art film that explores the tensions of life amongest the ethnic melting pot that comprises the population of Israel: Jews, Muslim and Christian Israeli-Arabs. Steering away from Middle East politics for a welcome change, all groups are portrayed with great humanity and understanding played by an excellent cast of non-professional actors trained for this film in a very unique style shown in the Special Features section. Interestingly, these Israeli-Arabs, residents of a Jaffa slum bordering Tel Aviv speak Arabic richly laced with Hebrew words and phrases. Excellent film that I recommend highly. Other than I Love You Rosa, this is probably the best film to come out of Israel, at least in the past 20 years, and it's too bad it didn't win a well deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Film. I loved it both times I saw it: in the theater and on DVD.

Jay Weissberg (22 April 2012)

Rarely has the tinderbox nature of the Middle East been so accurately lensed, on such an intimate scale, as in Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani's powerful Ajami.

Daniel M. Kimmel (17 April 2012)

Hollywood [may]think that Ajami is making a political statement... given the partnership of the directors. Unfortunately, it's not enough to make this a memorable film.

Noel Murray (16 April 2012)

Ajami keeps asking: When do people cross the line? And when does pulling the trigger become a viable option?

zikood (08 April 2012)

Even at 10/10, the film is still underrated

Ajami is a masterpiece, a film of the rare quality you look for whenhitting the cinema. The achievements of this film are far greater thanany shortcomings or glitches people may find.As someone who's been to many of the exact locations (or similar) thefilm portrays, I was thrilled to see how well the film managed toconnect these geographical dots together and create a very specificvisual language.Not often you see so many diverse landscapes and locations in one filmwithout the diversity being annoying and decorative. In a Ajami's case,the wide selection of locations enhances the strong linkage: a smallvillage near Nablus, the city of Tel-Aviv, a Bedouin encampment can beall linked by a single event.By going in digging backwards into the events, it seems like only morequestions arise, more events happen to be linked and the realityhappens to be far different to what we expect.This is the biggest quality of the film: It manages to open the eyes ofthose who thought their eyes were open already.

Joshua Rothkopf (08 April 2012)

The combustible movie has had a strangely unifying effect on audiences worldwide; it deserves to find traction where it counts.

Tim Brayton (08 April 2012)

Has an honest urgency born from the filmmakers' very specific personal histories.

Jonathan F. Richards (08 April 2012)

The fact that these two Israelis from opposite camps worked together to make this movie is as important as the movie itself.

Steven Rea (06 April 2012)

Ajami brings its audience into a world where the cultural conflict is fierce, emotions run high, yet the hopeful vision of peaceful coexistence shines through the cracks.

Dennis Schwartz (06 April 2012)

Gripping modern-day drama about crime and tensions among the Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs.

dromasca (06 April 2012)

'Ajami' is part of our world

'Ajami', the Israeli entry for the Oscar this year is very differentfrom the successful films that represented the country in the previousyears. Directed by two newcomers on the cinema scene Scandar Copti andYaron Shani, it is acted most of the time in Arabic and deals with aworld that many Israelis know only from the news - the crime andpoverty dominated Arab districts at the periphery of the Israeli bigcities.The name of the film is of one of these areas, in Jaffo, southand close to the shining lights of the Tel Aviv metropolis.Playing a little on the violent suburbs genre that was successful inother off-mainstream cinema schools 'Ajami' a complex crime story,involving a few characters who seem to be doomed for tragedy. AnIsraeli Muslim Arab finds himself in the middle of a families feud thatturns into violence, murder and revenge. An illegal Palestinian workerbadly needs money to help his ailing mother. Both will need theprotection of a rich restaurant owner who is also a kind of localauthority beyond and above police and law enforcement. Both will becomeinvolved in a drug deal which ends in shootings. Police seems unable tocontrol the area and fits badly in the landscape, its appearance seemsjust to generate more conflict and violence than law and order. One ofthe policemen lives his own tragedy, his brother soldier brotherdisappears and is found later in Palestinian territory, probablykidnapped and murdered by terrorists. All these disparate threads comenicely together towards the end and the intelligent script writing isthe best part of the film.It is not a pleasant film to see, and not designed to be so. The storyis told from the perspective of the different characters, it requiresattention to follow, and even if it has logic and all pieces of thepuzzle eventually fit well, the different angles and the jumps in timemake the film difficult or at least demanding to see. Actors aredirected towards a very natural way of acting, improvisation and livingthe character seems to be the rule rather than careful rehearsal of therole - this gives a feeling of natural and chaos of life, but it asksthe viewer rather than the director to fill in with meaning whathappens on screen. Last, the colors and landscape is in many casesdesolate and soulless, dirty and brutal, as the world the characterslive in.This realistic piece of cinema succeeds to be both direct in its modeof expression and sophisticated in its story-telling. The averageIsraeli viewer is impacted by the image of a part of the country andsocial life that is close and far at the same time. The finaloff-screen words belong to one of the characters, a child of theneighborhood who draws the comics representation of the story all alongthe film, to become part of the drama in the final. 'Do not close youreyes' - this message may be part of the whole society, as Ajami is partof the same world we all live in.

(06 April 2012)

Ajami - Kino (Blu-ray)

In our societies, when we think about the Middle East, what comes to mind might be the Israel-Palestine conflict, the war in Iraq, and maybe Iran - that's it. But we easily forget that the people in that region are affected in their everyday life by many of the problems that plague our society, too. That's what I got when I watched "Ajami," a riveting tour de force of daily life in one community in Israel, one of those films that you won't forget.The stories included in "Ajami" take place mostly in the Ajami neighborhood, located in Jaffa, a city incorporated with Tel-Aviv, in which Muslims, Christians, Jews and others co-exist in what appears to be a very fragile environment. The film begins with the assassination of Yihyah, a young man who was mistaken by somebody else, and paid with his life. The crime was witnessed by Nasri (Fouad Habash), a child whose voice tells us the origin of this horrible incident. It all started when a Bedouin went to Nasri's uncle's business to demand protection money. The uncle "makes the mistake" of shooting the criminal, which was a truly bad move, because the Bedouin belonged to the powerful Abul-Zen Clan, which will not rest until everybody in Nasri's family is decimated. So, as Nasry says, "the worst time of my life began." Nasri is moved out of town by his mother. However, his brother, Omar (Shabir Kabaha), stays and tries to find a way out. For this purpose, he seeks the help of Abu-Lias (Youssef Sahwani), a café owner with connections. He informs Omar that they want to kill him, and that money is the only solution. So Omar and Abu-Lias meet a mediator and the gang leaders, and it is agreed that he has to pay the Clan 35,000 Dinars ($57,000), in order that he and his family can be spared. This, of course, is almost impossible. The movie is divided in chapters, and in the first three we meet other characters with similar problems, all of which are connected at the end, providing us with a big, dramatic picture, one that hits you in the gut. And you thought you had problems."Ajami" is what life is all about, and, in addition of entertaining, it really adds to your knowledge in understanding those cultures a little better. The film was deservedly nominated for the 2010 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category, and won numerous others, including five awards at the Israeli Film Academy, two being for Best Film and Best Directors (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani). The magnificent Blu-ray edition is loaded with extras, such as deleted scenes, trailer, a documentary about the actors (mostly non-professional), and more. (Germany/Israel, 2009, color, 120 min plus additional materials)Reviewed on October 6, 2010 exclusively by Eric Gonzalez for [...]