'Ajami', the Israeli entry for the Oscar this year is very different from the successful films that represented the country in the previous years. Directed by two newcomers on the cinema scene Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, it is acted most of the time in Arabic and deals with a world that many Israelis know only from the news - the crime and poverty dominated Arab districts at the periphery of the Israeli big cities.The name of the film is of one of these areas, in Jaffo, south and close to the shining lights of the Tel Aviv metropolis.

Playing a little on the violent suburbs genre that was successful in other off-mainstream cinema schools 'Ajami' a complex crime story, involving a few characters who seem to be doomed for tragedy. An Israeli Muslim Arab finds himself in the middle of a families feud that turns into violence, murder and revenge. An illegal Palestinian worker badly needs money to help his ailing mother. Both will need the protection of a rich restaurant owner who is also a kind of local authority beyond and above police and law enforcement. Both will become involved in a drug deal which ends in shootings. Police seems unable to control the area and fits badly in the landscape, its appearance seems just to generate more conflict and violence than law and order. One of the policemen lives his own tragedy, his brother soldier brother disappears and is found later in Palestinian territory, probably kidnapped and murdered by terrorists. All these disparate threads come nicely together towards the end and the intelligent script writing is the best part of the film.

It is not a pleasant film to see, and not designed to be so. The story is told from the perspective of the different characters, it requires attention to follow, and even if it has logic and all pieces of the puzzle eventually fit well, the different angles and the jumps in time make the film difficult or at least demanding to see. Actors are directed towards a very natural way of acting, improvisation and living the character seems to be the rule rather than careful rehearsal of the role - this gives a feeling of natural and chaos of life, but it asks the viewer rather than the director to fill in with meaning what happens on screen. Last, the colors and landscape is in many cases desolate and soulless, dirty and brutal, as the world the characters live in.

This realistic piece of cinema succeeds to be both direct in its mode of expression and sophisticated in its story-telling. The average Israeli viewer is impacted by the image of a part of the country and social life that is close and far at the same time. The final off-screen words belong to one of the characters, a child of the neighborhood who draws the comics representation of the story all along the film, to become part of the drama in the final. 'Do not close your eyes' - this message may be part of the whole society, as Ajami is part of the same world we all live in.

Ajami is a first film by the team of Scandar Copti, an Israeli Arab (with a Christian family name), and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew. It gained recognition at Cannes and in Israel; and is nominated for the Best Foreign Oscar. Using locally recruited non-actors, shooting in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, which has become a mostly Arab ghetto outpost of Tel Aviv, 'Ajami' is full of improvisation and hand-held camera work that give it an intense feeling of immediacy -- and seethes with action disturbing enough to leave you feeling bruised. Israeli cinema is remarkable for a tiny country; it's a pity more Arabs outside Israel can't see this film. Despite the myriad hostilities and misunderstandings 'Ajami' depicts -- between Palestinians from the territories and Israeli Arabs; Arab Christians and Arab Muslims; Israelis and Arabs; rich and poor; old and young -- there is hope in the fact that an Arab and a Jew could team up for such passionate film-making.

'Ajami' interweaves multiple story-lines with a documentary feel using a large cast and, to make matters more complicated but also underline interconnections, it's divided into chapters that are not quite in chronological order so some events are seen again, from a different angle the second time. Most of the scenes are in Arabic but some are in Hebrew or a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic. All the location inter-titles and the end credits are rigorously both Hebrew and Arabic -- a practice not uncommon in Israeli cinema, but especially resonant here.

The action begins with a drive-by shooting -- of the wrong person. A young boy, Nasri (Fouad Habash), who narrates the film, his soft voice giving it a kind of clarity and delicacy, is present when his cousin is shot while working on a car in the street. The hit man meant to get Nasri's brother Omar (Shahir Kabaha), as revenge for Nasri's uncle's killing of an extortionist. Omar is now clearly in mortal danger.

The neighborhood leader and restaurant owner Abu Elias (Youssef Sahwani) arranges a deal-brokering among village elders at a bedouin camp where men bid back and forth as to how much protection or payoff money is required for Omar to stay alive. Omar can't possibly raise the sum finally arrived upon, but he's indentured at Abu Elias' restaurant; and there, Omar turns out to be in love with his boss' daughter Hadir (Ranin Karim), a serious no-no, since her family is Christian and Omar's is Muslim. Next there arrives a bright-eyed and innocent teenager, Malek (Ibrahim Frege) who sneaks in from the occupied territories and is an illegal worker in the restaurant, an Arab exploited by an Arab, the harsh Abu Elias. Malek also has an impossible financial burden, needing to raise many thousands to pay for a bone marrow transplant for his seriously ill mother.

Eventually both Omar and Malek are drawn into trying to deal dope to raise money, against the strong objections of Nasri, and totally against the wishes of Abu Elias, who wishes to appear to function within the law, even if he doesn't.

Meanwhile there are the Israeli and near-Israeli parts of the story. Dishonest Israeli cop Dando (Eran Naim) appears both as a bastard, when persecuting the boys who're clumsily attempting to sell cocaine, and a softy, when it comes to the disappearance of his younger brother from the army, perhaps captured by Palestinians, an event that devastates his family (these are the all-Hebrew scenes). The Arab co-director Copti himself plays Binj, a Palestinian who speaks fluent Hebrew and has a non-Arabic speaking Jewish girlfriend. He is pressured by his Arab friends for this, and his life turns tragic when he holds drugs for the others after his brother has stabbed a Jewish neighbor in an argument over noisy animals, and the cops manhandle him, with Dando on hand in his bad-cop role. This sequence about Binj seems to dramatize the futility of cross-over dreams in this harsh world. (The problems faced by Arabs living in a Hebrew-speaking Israeli environment has also been dealt with in the hit Israeli sitcom "Arab Work.")

It doesn't necessarily seem as though Dando is more dangerous, in a sense, for the young Palestinians than the brutish Abu Elias, who threatens to break Omar's bones if he continues his courtship of Hadir. Partly it is the elders who appear as the villains, more threatening here than Israeli checkpoint guards.

One has to grapple with all these plot elements to follow 'Ajami.' The intersections get complicated, and the film is a bit under-edited at two full hours, but there is a wealth of cultural material that gets across along with the insistent problems and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness for young Arabs. There is great warmth among friends and family members of all stripes. But even fun moments seem framed in scariness, like a birthday celebration for Malek which he's sent to by threatening him that the "government" (الحكومة, i.e. police) is after him. Even the birthday present they give Malek, an electrified tennis racket, has an edge of menace. 'Ajami' doesn't stop for a breath or a moment of happiness: it succeeds in convincing you that isn't possible.

Further proof of that impossibility came early this month (February 2010) and life imitated art when Scandar Copti's brother Tony, a supporting actor in the film, was arrested after Israeli police accused some Ajami teenagers of hiding drugs who said they were only burying a dog. This led to a brawl in which Tony Copti and another brother were arrested and hauled off to the police station for questioning, according to a 'Haaretz' article.

I noticed that one reviewer said that this film was for all tastes. Well, I cannot see that at all. The film is pretty depressing and violent--and I'd never recommend it to anyone who is depressed or who doesn't want to see a film like this. It's gritty, tough and not something for all tastes. However, it was recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (i.e, the Oscar folks) and was nominated for Best Foreign Language movie.

This film is very unusual because it is seen from several different viewpoints. I never would have imagined an Israeli film where the main characters are divided up into chapters and each one stars such different people--such as Palestinian Muslims, Palestinian Christians as well as Jews. This is the best thing about the film--it humanizes everyone and shows motivation of everyone. None of them are evil, exactly---just people for good or for bad.

As far as the story goes, here's where it gets depressing. Different folks NEED money and need it fast--such as the young man who must gather an astronomical sum to keep a violent gang from wiping out his family and another who needs to pay for his mother's life-saving surgery. What these folks do to try to get the money as well as the sad story of the dead Jewish young man all make for a compelling but incredibly depressing story. Death abounds and life is cheap in this film.

Overall, it IS well made and the acting is quite nice. But I just found myself feeling awful by the time is was finished. Maybe you'll get more out of it than me...I dunno.