Lying immediately to Tel Aviv's south, the ancient port city of Jaffa is home to a heterogeneous Muslim, Jewish and Christian population, but recent waves of gentrification have been squeezing out Jaffa's traditional communities. The political tensions from which Tel Aviv is sometimes thought to be separated pulse in the plaster and pavement of Jaffa, hashed out in the debates over so-called beautification projects that threaten both low-income residents and the city's architectural and cultural heritage.
It is in precisely this space that Keren Yedaya – whose previous feature, Or, won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2004 – chooses to explore how prejudices are inherited, and how we can share the smallest of spaces and still stay separate. In this contemporary Romeo and Juliet story, a young Jewish woman, Mali (Dana Ivgy), and her brother, Meir (Roy Assaf), both work in their father's garage, a place they have haunted since they were children. So do Mali's childhood sweetheart, Taufik (Mahmoud Shalaby), and his father, Hassan (Hussein Yassin Mahajneh), Arabs in Mali's father's employ. Now in their teens, Mali and Taufik are in love and on the brink of elopement, fully aware that the same family realities that brought them into each other's lives would always stand in the way of their union.
When tragedy strikes hours before their escape, it shatters both the years of trust they shared and the symbolic promise of Jew and Arab living together, not just in peace but in romantic bliss. Retreating to a position of distrust and self-preservation, Mali and her family put walls around themselves. But this is only the beginning of the story.
Yedaya is one of the Tel Aviv area's passionate, politically committed young filmmakers. Her storytelling and her ideals are inseparable: she addresses the region's conflict by recreating tensions in miniature, and what is more important, she does so without overstating the point that her characters are Jewish and Arab. Rather, they are individuals and families who find themselves in conflict; Jaffa's power rests in how acutely we come to share the pain of their all-too-human broken hearts. But thisis a hopeful film: Mali and Taufik's desires may be crushed in theopening act, but the conclusion inspires us to dream of a different future.
Kate Lawrie Van de Ven
Keren Yedaya is an Israeli filmmaker who trained at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv. She has made the short films Elinor (94), Lulu (98) and Underwear (00). Her first feature, Or (04), won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and her second feature, Jaffa (09), also screened at the Cannes Film Festival.