By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Yuval Adler
Starring: George Iskander | Hisham Suliman | Hitham Omari | Michal Shtamler | Shadi Mar'i | Tarik Kopty | Tsahi Halevi
Country: belgium, germany, israel
Year: 2014
Running time: 99
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2915160/combined
Kyle says: “The murky moral morass of murderous ages-old conflict between Jews and Arabs, and the seemingly never-ro-end war been Israel and Palestine, have brought us two of the year’s best films. The first is OMAR, about which Jason wrote for Chlotrudis back in March, which was Palestine’s entry into nomination for a 2013 Best Foreign Film Academy Award, and winner of the Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize last year for Palestinian writer/director Hany Abu-Assad, with a star-making performance by Adam Bakri in the lead role. The second is BETHLEHEM, funding for which was shared by Israel, Germany and Belgium; it is the recipient of twelve awards and nominations in virtually every category from the Israeli Film Academy: Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor, Casting, Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound, Music and Makeup. The independently run Venice Days sidebar of the Venice Film Festival bestowed its prize for Best Film on BETHLEHEM in 2013.
“BETHLEHEM centers on the complicated emotional relationship between Razi (Tsahi Halevi), an Israeli Secret Service officer, and Sanfur (Shadi Mar’i, in one of the outstanding performances of the year), a hot-headed Palestinian teenager whose brother is a famous Palestinian patriot or terrorist, depending on point of view. Under other circumstances, the relationship could be regarded as that of a father and adopted son, notwithstanding the lies and half-truths the two share, but politics have made such clarity impossible. Sanfur is referred to by Israeli Intelligence as an ‘asset’ — a word heard blithely and repeatedly in such spy movies as THE BOURNE TRILOGY to characterize an assassin or informant.
“Sanfur seems to live between daredevil stunts involving guns and flak jackets, with the constant possibility of injury or death, and smartphone calls from his handler or brother, whereby the possibility of caller ID can lead to betrayal, torture and death. His parents figure only tangentially in his life, his mother largely absent, his father hanging onto a set of beliefs that has long ago proved futile. The stage is set early on for one disastrous event after another. That our attention is emotionally engaged and held in a vice by these horrors is a tribute to a devastatingly knowledgable screenplay jointly written by director Yuval Adler and writer Ali Waked, who spent ten years reporting on the lives of Palestinians in occupied territories, and has repeatedly been attacked by Mahmoud Abbas for his coverage of Palestinian Authority corruption. Although some will regard BETHLEHEM as a political thriller, there is a decidedly existential futility that renders the film far more disturbing and difficult to categorize. Both OMAR and BETHLEHEM have shocking endings, but both films are urgently recommended. 5 cats
“Tuesday, September 16, 2014, on Netflix, New York.”