TWO ISRAELI FILMS EXPRESS FRIENDSHIP FOR PALESTINIANS—AND MUCH MORE!
The Romeo & Juliet paradigm has been one-upped in Out in the Dark, directed by Michael Mayer. The film not only depicts a forbidden love affair between an Israel and a Palestinian but also between two gay men, whose sexual orientation is not accepted by either side in the political conflict. The Palestinian, Nimr Mashrawi (played by Nicholas Jacob), is a brilliant psychology study, attending a university in the West Bank, who has just been granted an unlimited pass to attend a class at a university in Israel. When he enters a gay bar in Tel Aviv, he not only befriends transsexual Gil (Alon Pdut) but also an Israeli, Roy Schaefer (Michael Aloni), who is the junior partner in his father’s law firm. Both are keeping their sexual orientation in the closet, but that changes later. Whereas Schaefer’s law firm deals with gangsters, Nimr’s brother is assembling a cache of arms that might be used in terrorist attacks. But Israelis are also terrorists in the film, blackmailing gay Palestianians to rat on their comrades under penalty of death if they want to continue to live in or visit Israel. As the film proceeds, the modernity of Israel is contrasted with the run-down condition of the West Bank, where Palestinians live an apartheid existence in which Israeli armed patrol officers have itchy fingers on their triggers. But the two men are deeply in love, and when the dragnet tries to close in on his Palestinian lover after his brother captures an Israeli officer, Roy discovers an underground railroad by sea for Nimr to go to France while he is arrested for facilitating the escape. What happens in the end is left for the filmviewer to imagine, but the Political Film Society has nominated Out in the Dark for best film on human rights of 2013. MH
Zaytoun revolves around the fate of someone captured in the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The period portrayed, much earlier than Out in the Dark, is a decade after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israel expelled so many Palestinians from the West Bank that the Palestine Liberation Organization reestablished a headquarters and training camps in Lebanon, with a UN monitoring force situated on the border between Israel and Lebanon. One day, 15-year-old Fahed (remarkably played by Abdallah El Akal) is in training at a Palestinian camp inside Lebanon when an Israeli jet flies overhead. Picking up his rifle, he pretends to shoot down the plane, but at that very moment the plane is hit and falls to earth. The pilot, Yoni (Steven Dorff), parachutes but is captured by Palestinians, so Fahed decides to visit the man whom he presumably shot down to revel over his incarceration. However, Fahed badly wants to visit his hometown, abandoned during an Israeli attack when he was 5, and Yoni sees an opportunity to make a deal: If Fahed will free him from captivity while still handcuffed, Yoni will take Fahed, carrying a small zaytoun (olive tree), to his abandoned hometown. Much of the film then proceeds as a road trip (albeit entirely filmed in Israel) through many hazards, such as checkpoints and minefields, and the two gradually become close friends, though Yoni is mystified by Fahed’s insistence on taking along the olive tree until they reach his former home. The title, chosen by director Eran Riklis clearly states an anti-war theme. Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Zaytoun as best film on peace of 2013. MH