Ajami (Film)

Ajami centers on interconnected lives in a Jaffa neighborhood where family feuds, crime, religious differences, and financial pressures shape relationships across communal boundaries.[1][2] Its characters include Muslim and Christian Arab residents, a Palestinian teenager working without legal permission, and a Jewish police officer whose soldier brother has disappeared.[1] Most of the dialogue is in Arabic, with some in Hebrew.[6]

The film brings together stories of a family facing retaliation, a teenager trying to finance medical treatment, a relationship opposed on religious grounds, and a policeman searching for his brother.[1] Nasri, a young boy who aspires to be an artist, narrates the intersecting stories.[3] Rather than proceeding chronologically, the film moves backward and forward through five chapters, returning to characters whose fates have already been revealed.[1]

Shani and Copti worked together for seven years on the project, which became the first full-length film for both directors.[7][1] Contemporary coverage used differing identity descriptions; a Ynet review described Shani as Israeli and Copti as Palestinian.[1] They borrowed money from their families and assembled an almost entirely nonprofessional cast.[3][1] Some performers were residents of the neighborhood, and the cast underwent a ten-month workshop before filming.[1]

The directors wrote the story, while the actors improvised dialogue in Arabic and Hebrew.[7] Principal cast members attended theater and improvisation workshops; for filming, each actor was separately told what would happen in a scene, which was then recorded with two cameras.[7] The production generated approximately 80 hours of footage, subsequently edited into a film described at the time as two hours long.[7] Copti characterized the intended effect of the performances by saying, “You feel that you're seeing reality, not a performance.”[7]

Shani said that the film’s stories were based on real events whose details had shocked him.[7] He described local intermediaries such as the character Abu Elias as “an alternative social framework completely disconnected from the legal framework of the state.”[7] Discussing subjects including crime, Arab–Jewish relations, and tensions within Arab communities, he argued that the production needed two directors, one from each community.[7]

Approximately 40 percent of the financing came from the Israel Film Fund and 60 percent from German producers.[7] The directors suggested that the difficult subject matter might have limited the project’s appeal to Israeli funders.[7] Yanosan Productions was the production company, and the film’s theatrical premiere took place on September 17, 2009; its television premiere followed on February 10, 2011.[8]

The opening shooting kills a man working on his bicycle, although the attackers are looking for Omar, Nasri’s older brother.[3] Omar’s family has become embroiled in a feud after his uncle shoots a member of a crime family.[1] Abu Elias, a local fixer and restaurant owner, arranges a settlement requiring a payment that Omar’s family cannot afford.[3] The financial demand leads Omar toward drug dealing.[3]

A second storyline follows Malek, a 16-year-old Palestinian from Nablus who enters Jaffa illegally and works at Abu Elias’s restaurant.[1][3] He is trying to pay for his mother’s bone marrow transplant.[3] The restaurant owner’s daughter, Hadir, falls in love with Omar, but her Christian father opposes her relationship with a Muslim.[1]

Dando, a Jewish police officer, is searching for his younger brother, a soldier who has disappeared.[1][3] His investigation brings him into contact with Binj after Binj’s brother kills a Jewish neighbor.[3] Binj, played by Copti, is a young neighborhood resident who wants to live with his Jewish girlfriend but becomes entangled in trouble.[1][3]

These stories are presented through shifts in chronology and chapters concentrating on different characters.[1] Characters reappear after the narrative has already disclosed their fates, making the later chapters revisit events from other positions within the connected story.[1] The plot links the characters through the restaurant, family relationships, police investigations, and a drug deal.[1][3]

At the 20th Ophir Awards, held in Haifa in September 2009, Ajami won Best Picture and four further awards: Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Original Music.[9][4] It was the first primarily Arabic-language film to win the Ophirs’ top prize.[9] The Best Picture victory made it Israel’s official selection for consideration in the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category.[9]

Sources describe the film’s Cannes recognition as a special or honorable mention associated with the Caméra d’Or; it also won the Wolgin Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival before its Ophir success.[6][7] It subsequently secured a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, becoming Israel’s third consecutive film to reach the final nominees in that category.[5] The other competing films represented Argentina, Peru, France, and Germany.[5] Argentina’s El Secreto de Sus Ojos won the award.[6]

The Oscar nomination prompted an excited response among the production team; producer Mosh Danon described the reaction of people in his office.[5] Copti expressed the hope that the nomination would draw attention to Israel’s Arab minority and help audiences understand the experience of a Palestinian living in Israel.[5]

The film’s intertwined conflicts extend beyond relations between Jews and Arabs to divisions within Arab society, including Christian opposition to a Muslim–Christian relationship and the role of family-based violence.[1][7] Its central characters face pressures involving medical costs, family protection, romantic attachment, and the disappearance of a loved one.[1] Jaffa provides the shared setting for these personal struggles and the encounters that connect them.[1]

Shani later described the film as addressing conflict that arises when people do not understand one another’s experiences.[10] He said the filmmakers sought to listen to characters who commit serious crimes rather than judge them.[10] He also presented collaboration between people holding opposing views as an example of the society he would want to live in.[10]

Ajami has also been included in teaching about Israeli identity and the Israeli–Arab conflict.[11] A course syllabus placed it in a unit titled “Being An Israeli Arab/A Palestinian: A Citizen?, A Refugee?, An Enemy Within?”[11] Beyond the classroom, the film drew visitors to neighborhood locations: staff at the Babai restaurant reported encounters with people who recognized the setting and spoke enthusiastically about the film.[12]

Shortly before the 2010 Oscar ceremony, Copti said that although Ajami technically represented Israel in the competition, he did not represent Israel and could not represent a state that did not represent him.[13] Shani disagreed, maintaining that it was an Israeli film dealing with Israeli problems.[13] Producer Talia Kleinhendler and the Israel Film Fund also regarded the production as Israeli.[14] Copti’s remarks prompted criticism from Israeli officials and politicians, including Culture Minister Limor Livnat, who pointed to state support; the film had received more than two million shekels in funding.[13]

Some Ajami residents also objected to the neighborhood’s portrayal, feeling that the film emphasized its negative aspects and gave it a bad name.[12][14] Those objections coexisted with positive local responses, including the restaurant staff’s accounts of visitors attracted by the film.[12]