Let It be Morning -- a new film by Eran Kolirin

The new award-winning feature film, Let It Be Morning, directed by Eran Kolirin, based on a novel by the well-known Israeli Palestinian writer, Sayed Kashua, is a biting political satire which won the Israeli Ophir award this year as best film and therefore will be Israel’s representative to the Oscars in the category of foreign films.  Filmmaker Eran Kolirin won this award once before with his film The Band’s Visit, but the film was rejected due to the fact that it spoke mostly English and therefore couldn’t be considered a foreign film. Let It Be Morning was in the newspapers last spring when it was chosen to be screened at Cannes, but was boycotted by the Palestinian cast because they did not agree that the film should be considered an Israeli film.

The film is about an Israeli Arab man, Sami, who works in high-tech in Jerusalem.  He is married with a son.  After attending his brother’s wedding in the village where he grew up, he finds the road back to Jerusalem has been closed, and he is stuck, not able to return home to Jerusalem, to his job, to his Jewish lover, or to his life.

Although the story is imaginary since Israeli Arab villages don’t have the roads closed and the village electricity turned off, it does however reflect a lot of reality, especially the complexity of life in the occupied West Bank.  The story is about an ongoing closure, the road out of the village is blocked for an unspecified reason, the electricity to the village has been turned off, and there is no food left on the shelves in the grocery stores.  Also, there is a secondary plot which does reflect the contemporary reality within Israeli Arab villages – the head of the town council runs the village like a hoodlum and as a result there is corruption and violence within the social fabric of the village.

Checkpoints have been the focal points of many Israeli films in the past.  Here the tightening checkpoint is part of the absurdity of the story. In fact, one of the soldiers who sits at the checkpoint is both friendly and aggressive, both eager to do his job and lazy, a sleeping serpent, so to speak.

This film, which is a bit like theatre of the absurd, also conveys a message about the inter-connection between the Palestinians within Israel who are citizens of the state of Israel and Palestinians of the West Bank who live under military occupation since 1967. Some of the West Bank Palestinians, who work in Israel, often sleep in Israeli Arab villages, which poses a dilemma for the locals who are citizens of Israel, and who sometimes harbor their cousins illegally.  This film cleverly portrays some of the impossible dilemmas of Israeli Arabs, who are in a double bind—how can they be loyal citizens of the Jewish state while maintaining their commitment to Palestinians under occupation. This puts them in psychological occupation.  It should be noted that Sayed Kashua himself found life so absurd here that he no longer lives in Israel.  He has moved to the United States.

Tel Aviv on Fire

Tel Aviv on Fire, directed by Sameh Zoabi, opened this week in Israeli movie theaters.  It has already garnered awards both in Israel and abroad. The film is a superb satire about the absurdity of the Occupation, the humiliation of the checkpoints, and the chutzpah of some of the Israelis who try to make decisions for the Palestinians about what is best for them, especially IDF officers at the checkpoints.

Working for his uncle on a Palestinian soap opera, Salem has to drive regularly from Jerusalem to Ramallah to be on the set as a Hebrew dialogue consultant.  The soap opera is set on the background of the Six Day War of 1967 and is apparently popular with both Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli audiences. The story is about a Palestinian woman terrorist/freedom fighter (depends on your point of view) who is assigned to seduce an Israeli general.

As Salem advances to become a scriptwriter for the TV series, we watch as he takes the story from real life and adapts it cleverly for the TV screen.  There is some romance – both in the story of the soap opera and in Salem’s own life. Yet, the strongest parts of the film can be found in the political commentary (some of it not-so-subtle, in fact quite sharp and biting), especially in the comments of the uncle about the ongoing Occupation which controls so much of Palestinian daily life in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In addition, the film has a brilliant ending, which I will not reveal here, but leaves the viewer with the realization that the struggle by Palestinians against the Occupation will continue until it is over.

The actors in this film are all excellent, especially the lead Palestinian actor, Kais Nashif, who plays his role as someone who is seemingly aimless and easily led by others. Things get a bit out of hand when Salem turns to the commanding officer at the checkpoint -- where he finds himself humiliated on a daily basis – for advice on the character of the 1967 Israeli general.  As a result, we find Salem caught between the checkpoint officer’s view of things and his uncle’s need for underlying messages supporting the Palestinian struggle.

The filmmaker, Sameh Zoabi, is a Palestinian Israeli, who grew up in Iksal, an Arab village in the Galilee, and lives both in the USA and Israel. In a feature article by Nirit Anderman about him which appeared in the Haaretz magazine in Hebrew and in the English Haaretz this week, he shared some of his thoughts about making this film.  When asked about his responsibility to his people as a director and screenwriter, he responded, “I try to create from a very personal place… We have a greater responsibility than Jewish Israelis because our narrative is not so well known.”