Tel Aviv on Fire

I watched this and I loved it! I really liked the fact that you couldn't predict where it was going. Sure, it wasn't going to end 'badly', like people dying, but the end game as definitely not given up. That's what kept me gripped. The humor is very well done, very subtle, as is the political aspects of this movie. I like that the director wanted to remind people of how life is in the occupied territories, but not in a lecturing manner. And we don't get beaten over the head with it either. Some people have commented on the portrayal of Salam, and how the actor seems to just be wrong for the role. I beg to differ. I think he's perfect! The whole hilarious aspect of this is that he's kind of bumbling his way to the top. He's very imperfect, and bad things happen to him, but then turn into good things. It's just funny how everything just works out, so that's part of the charm of it. If he was a verbose, charismatic person, it would distract from the soap opera acting on the set within the film. The best thing about this film is that everyone plays an important part in moving the story forward to the final outcome, even the shopkeeper with the expired canned hummus. No single actor or character steals scenes, everyone plays their parts and does a good job of it. The ending is definitely the best 'twist' ending I've seen in a long time! Highly recommended if you want to watch a feel-good movie set in a difficult, politically charged environment.

The laid back subtle and satirical humor is mostly effective here. Somehow, Sameh Zoab, director and co-writer with Don Kleinman, pulls it off despite all the political turmoil that has encased the region for so long now.

The acting is first rate as well, and I thought the surprise and clever ending enhanced the movie. Overall, quite the engaging surprise with its positive message.

Tel Aviv on Fire is a jubilant comedy about Israel and Palestine, grazing the absurd on serious subjects. The interactions between the different characters from either Israel or Palestine are a veritable delight. The movie Tel Aviv on Fire is about the shooting of an eponymous soap opera, a kind of an imaginary remake of the pathetic and immortal The Young and the Restless (1973), taking place in Tel Aviv and dealing with love between Israelis and Palestinians, during the Six-Day War, with spies, double agents, generals, terrorists and tutti quanti.

The movie is essentially based on these three characters: 1) Tala is the lead actress within the soap opera, coming from France. She is a middle-aged starlet, a seductive and manipulative woman, and regularly gazes at her own navel. She is played by Lubna Azabal, moving and sublime in Incendies (2010). 2) Salam is a somewhat clumsy but endearing man who, thanks to a happy combination of circumstances, will be promoted co-scriptwriter on the series. Of course, as human as he is, he will use his new position, a bit for himself, in order to win back his beloved darling. 3) Assi is a guard at a checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and is terribly imbued with his person to a point that makes him hilarious. His megalomania allows him to interfere in writing the script!

This movie is definitely a must see: the trio Lubna Azabal, Kais Nashif and Yaniv Biton is a 'bomb' (an absurd and two-penny joke, freely inspired from the movie).

"Tel Aviv on Fire" is an instant classic. I didn't think a comedy that revolves around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was possible but Sameh Zoabi pulled it off. That is not to say that the movie downplays the suffering and struggles of everyday life there, it is clear as day on the screen. But even the darkest of situations requires a sense of humor and perhaps humor can be the first step towards peace.

Making a film about the conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians (or, shortly, 'the conflict' as the locals call it) is probably almost as complicated as the peace talks between the two sides. Yet, scriptwriter and director Sameh Zoabi chose not only to write and direct such a film, but also chose as topic the making nowadays of such a film titled 'Tel Aviv on Fire'. The genre? A soap opera - one of the most popular forms of cinema and television entertainment in the Middle East, with peak viewing rates among both the Jewish and the Arab sectors. The historical moment when the action takes place? The 1967 war, one of the key moments of the "conflict," a crushing Israeli victory and Arab defeat, perceived in polarized opposite ways by the two sides. An Arab television studio in Ramallah is making a soap opera that tries to rewrite history, as many movies from big houses do, in this case the 1967 war history. A brilliant cinematic idea - a soap opera in a soap opera.

The main hero (performed by the excellent actor Kais Nashif) is an aspiring film maker who works as a Hebrew language consultant for the soap opera, and who finds himself blessed with the opportunity to become the script writer of the series, having to reconcile all the parties that seem impossible to coexist in this part of the world: the Arab sponsors wishing that the film has a more patriotic message, the Israeli officer commanding the crossing point between Jerusalem and territories who wants to embellish the image of the Israeli officer in the story, the producer who wants to make a successful film, and his girlfriend who doubts his feelings. They all follow the successive episodes of the series and the way the action progresses, but can there be any outcome that is acceptable to all? Or is such an outcome just as impossible as a solution for peace in the Middle East?

The hero in the film has as tools his own talent and a few portions of humus (another topic of Israeli-Palestinian cultural mini-conflict). Director Sameh Zoabi uses the tools of soap opera combined with absurd humor, so suited to a conflict unwanted by most of those involved. Zoabi does not avoid stereotypes, on the contrary, uses them skillfully and in balanced doses. The result is better than I expected. He will not succeed in making everyone happy, I am convinced that many of those who have seen or will see the film will find smaller and bigger details that make them angry and will claim that the screenwriter /director has exaggerated in his sympathy with the other side. Probably even angrier will be some of those who will not see the movie but talk and write about it. Many of the situations seemed to me too exaggerated or unlikely, but I think such deviations are possible and admissible in a comedy that tries to approach in the satirical registry situations that are not simple at all. An extra merit of the film is that it brings to screen an intellectual and middle class Palestinian environment that is not shown too often in local films. I found 'Tel Aviv on Fire' to be an amusing and a necessary film. After all, if we really want to live in peace one day, we need, among other, to be able to sit one by the other, watch the same movie and laugh together. Even if the reasons and the scenes we laugh at are not always the same.