Tel Aviv em Chamas

Salam's uncle is the producer of Tel Aviv on Fire, a spy thriller / soap opera aimed at Palestinians but the show is also popular with Israelis (especially women). Salam is hired as dialect coach, but gets promoted to writer after his meddling causes the chief writer to quit. Salam tries to draw on family and friends for inspiration, but falls under the influence of the commander of the checkpoint he has to cross twice daily. The commander helps with script ideas, but pushes for the show to become more pro-Israeli. Meanwhile, his uncle, and the show's backers, have other ideas, trying to deal with their own trauma of Palestinian losses due to the six-day war.

This is an amusing yarn, with Salam being pulled in all directions by people with different agendas, while trying to fill a script and chasing a girl. Good lightweight entertainment from a film with a Palestine / Israel location.

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.

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.

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 Incêndios (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).

It's a pleasant surprise how a Palestinian film about a very serious issue could be funny at all. But this one pulls it off rather nicely.

The approach to make a film within a film works beautifully in this one. And the result is pure comedy.

The viewer heartily laughs at the seeming incongruity of Salam's situation. He has to cross the border daily to go to the West Bank where he works as a film production assistant and finding himself in a bind one morning after making an innocuous remark to an Israeli border guard. This silly encounter and its immediate outcome changes his life forever.

Kais Nashif is naturally funny as Salam. Yaniv Biton as Assi is credible as the border commander. His interaction with Salam as they finish the script of the soap opera is hilarious. And the ending is a marriage of convenience of sorts. It's one that satisfies extremists on either side of the aisle.

The message of the film is simple: promote the peace when each side listens to the other. Assi thinks so.