Ajami

This interesting Israeli film by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani could be seen as a Middle-Eastern Short Cuts. It is a tense mosaic-anthology of embattled lives in the district of Ajami in Jaffa, Israel – a neighbourhood known for having Jewish and Arab populations living in close proximity. The brutal drive-by shooting of a teenage boy is the starting point: it appears to be a gang-grudge hit, but a further disclosure shows the killing is related to another matter entirely, involving an illegal worker from the Occupied Territories and the killing of an Israeli soldier. The pattern of connections and coincidences is a little overschematic, but the movie has energy, especially in the grippingly real shooting scene at the beginning.