Frankly speaking I did not expect it. I was surprised even when ‘Ajami‘ made it for the short list, but here we are. For the third year in a row an Israeli film makes it in the final five for the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year. It’s not about the Lebanon war this time, although it does deal in its own way with the Israeli-Arab conflict. 90% spoken in Arabic. Co-directed by two young directors, one Arab, one Jewish at their first feature film, and set in the mixed Jewish and Arab city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, the film is first of all a smartly written story, sometimes so smart it is not easy to watch, and also a piece of the Israeli and Middle Eastern puzzle that is not visible for many of the Israelis. I liked it, but I was not enthusiastic when I saw first the film, and I wrote about it in my other piece already published on the blog.
On Friday I hope to go and see what is said to bee the great rival of ‘Ajami’ in the race, Michael Haneke‘s Das Weisse Band. It already grabbed La Palme d’Or. We’ll see.