Ajami (film)
Encyclopedia
Ajami is a 2009 Arab/Jewish collaboration drama film
. Its plot is set in the Ajami
neighborhood of Jaffa
.
-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.
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 film
s 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. 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.
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.
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
. Its plot is set in the Ajami
Ajami, Jaffa
Ajami is a neighborhood in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, situated south of Old Jaffa and north of the Jabaliyya neighborhood on the Mediterranean Sea.- History :...
neighborhood of Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
.
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 ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
-and-Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
Arab neighborhood of the Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
- Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
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
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Israeli companies – Inosan Productions, Twenty Twenty Vision, Israel Film Fund, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, ZDF
ZDF
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
, Arte
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, World Cinema Fund.
In Israel the film was very well received, and won the Ophir Award for Best Film, defeating Golden Lion
Golden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
Award-winner Lebanon
Lebanon (film)
Lebanon is an Israeli war film directed by Samuel Maoz. It won the Leone d'Oro at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, becoming the first Israeli-produced film to have won that honour. In Israel itself the film has caused some controversy. The film was nominated for 10 Ophir Awards,...
. It has been compared to Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
's early films, and to more recent crime film
Crime film
Crime films are films which focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film varies from realistic portrayals of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched evil doings of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal acts are almost always glorified in these movies.- Plays and films...
s such as City of God and Gomorra
Gomorra (film)
Gomorrah is a 2008 Italian film directed by Matteo Garrone, based on the book by Roberto Saviano. It deals with the Casalesi clan, a crime syndicate within the Camorra — a traditional criminal organization based in Naples and Caserta, in the southern Italian region of Campania.-Plot summary:The...
.
Ajami was the first predominantly Arabic-language film submitted by Israel for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, and it was nominated for the award. It lost to El secreto de sus ojos
El secreto de sus ojos
The Secret in Their Eyes is a 2009 Argentine crime thriller, directed by Juan José Campanella, based on Eduardo Sacheri's novel La Pregunta de Sus Ojos...
(Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
). 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 Festival2009 Cannes Film FestivalThe 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival...
:- Caméra d'OrCaméra d'OrThe Caméra d'Or is an award of the Cannes Film Festival for the best first feature film presented in one of the Cannes' selections ....
- Special Mention (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani) (won)
- Caméra d'Or
- European Film Awards:
- European Film Academy Discovery (nominated)
- Jerusalem Film FestivalJerusalem Film FestivalThe Jerusalem Film Festival is an international film festival held annually in Jerusalem, Israel. The festival was the brainchild of Lia van Leer, who inaugurated it on May 17, 1984...
:- Best Full-Length Feature (won)
- London Film FestivalLondon Film FestivalThe BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...
:- Sutherland TrophySutherland TrophyCreated in 1958, the Sutherland Trophy was awarded annually by the British Film Institute to "the maker of the most original and imaginative [first or second feature] film introduced at the National Film Theatre during the year"...
- 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 FestivalTallinn Black Nights Film FestivalTallinn Black Nights Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Tallinn, Estonia...
:- Best Eurasian Film (won)
- Thessaloniki International Film FestivalThessaloniki International Film FestivalThe Thessaloniki International Film Festival has become one of the Balkans' primary showcases for the work of new and emerging filmmakers...
- Golden Alexander (won)
- 2010 Academy Awards:
- Foreign Language Film (nominated)