A.K.A Nadia

"A.K.A. Nadia" (2015 release from Israel) brings the story of a women, whom we get to know as Nadia, a Palestine Arab who as the movie opens we see with her boyfriend Nimmer. He tells her that he's being transferred to England. In a desperate attempt to remain together, Nadia and Nimmer marry and then move to London. Alas, things go awry and Nadia now is in a desperate attempt to move back. She finds an ex-cop able to 'get' papers. When she sees the papers, it is of a Jewish-Israeli girl similar in age. We then are informed "West Jerusalem, Twenty Years Later", and Nadia is now Maya, happily married with two loving kids, and completely integrated in the Jewish day-to-day life. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the debut of writer-director Tova Asher, and what a debut it is! This theme has been explored before, albeit not in the same context, but the essence of the question is the same: when a person takes on a new identity, whatever the reason, at what point does this person truly become that new identity, if ever? In this case, the film's lead has been Maya for 20 years now, and was Nadia before that for probably another 20 years, maybe even more. Is she more Maya and Nadia, or the other way around, or is she both? And if so, what does it mean to live like a Jew for 20 years while having grown up as an Arab? The movie explores these themes to great effect, as the story unfolds in the riveting second half of the movie. I am biting my lip, but I shan't reveal any further.... just watch!

I recently saw this movie at the 2017 Jewish & Israeli Film Festival, and for me it was the best movie of the festival, period. The Wednesday evening screening at my local art-house theater was as good as sold out, and one could tell that the audience was fully absorbed by what was playing out on the big screen. If you get a chance to see this, do not miss it! "A.K.A. Nadia" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

At least initially, the film rests on the shoulders of Netta Shpigelman, who is not a big name in Israeli film. Her career has been primarily on the stage, although she popped up on TV in a tour- de-force impersonation the late Israeli poet Yona Wallach that had much of the audience guessing. Most films that are this focused on a single character provide a confidante or a sidekick so that the lead character's feelings can be given voice. In NADIA, the Aschers dispense with that convention and Shpigelman carries the ball, together with a script that sometimes skips details (or skips twenty years) and trusts the audience not to demand them, until the male lead pops up rather late in the movie. Although he appears in a scene or two without Nadia, he is not much of a character in his own right; he is just a garden-variety dead-handsome husband out of any woman's summer reading.

One reviewer was bothered that there isn't enough visual indication that Nadia ages 25 years in the course of the movie. It is a fault, and one or two coincidences are unfortunately forced, but as long as the movie follows Nadia, skipping from incident to incident and inviting the audience to react along with her to the hard choices that life presents, just about everything works.

Very slow, what could have been covered in 20 minutes took almost two painstaking hours. An interesting premise but too many gaps in the plot and a number of unresolved issues in the end. Opportunities for development in the lives of the principle characters during the period coveted by the film were lost. Too bad!