When Arab met Israeli…
Numerous movies have tried dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflict through the years – some of them did brilliant job and others did less. However, one intriguing aspect of this filmmaking is the way these movies are conceived by international audiences, and not in regard of any artistic factors. Two Israeli short films by Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv, initially aimed at international spectators, make an interesting test-case.
“Strangers” (2004)
“Offside” (2006)
Both movies present absurd situations and together offer two different options for the Israeli-Arab conflict. The two of them begin with the prior – and true – assumption of distrust and mutual hostility (at least from the Israeli side), but also the common characteristics (that is, both sides like soccer and they’re both threatened by neo-Nazis). While “Offside” holds a rather deterministic claim (the duel has to end with no-win situation), “Strangers” offers the complete opposite of an optimistic win-win situation, however, only by running away together from a common enemy and not thanks to a joint action. I think the film’s poster says clearly: “…the only thing that connect them together is mutual fear”.
Consequently, in both of the movies, the protagonists from both sides remain strangers exactly the same way they were before, and without really going through a real transition – and that obviously goes for the audience as well.
These could definitely be an outsider view over the situation, and therefore one should not be surprised about the warm hugs these movies were greeted with from international audiences: winning a number of awards, and especially adopted by American studios. The audience’s response might be explained by the fact that both movies are set in a nowhere location for the so-called witty allegoric concept: the Carmelit in Haifa actually serves as the French Metro, and the border line encounter can theoretically happen at any spot along hundreds of kilometers of Israeli borders.
However, being Israeli productions (a detail that seems to be strongly denied in both movies, despite the clear one-sided point of view in both), they actually function as “conscious Laundromats”, allegedly not avoiding dealing with “the problem” and giving two optional and opposite solutions, but at the same time assuming that no other reality is actually possible.
That said, a feature version of “Strangers” (that eventually made it to Sundance Film Festival, like the younger version), moves to (the real) Berlin’s S-Bahn and starts at the point where its predecessor ended apparently offering a third option. An abroad love story between an Israeli guy and a Palestinian girl evolves from an accidental backpacks exchange, and later involves Paris, the soccer world cup and the 2006 Lebanon war – hopefully, this movie offers more mature filmmaking as well as less dogmatic narrative.
