A film about Arab-Israeli women living in Tel Aviv is making waves.
A film about Arab-Israeli women who left their villages to live in Tel Aviv has angered some traditionalists in Israel’s Arab community, who say its depiction of homosexuality and independent single women is insulting.
“In Between”, which has an Arab director and a Jewish producer, won best film at the Haifa International Film Festival in October and accolades in Toronto and San Sebastian with its portrayal of three very different women who share an apartment in Israel’s most liberal city.
Layla is a lawyer and liberal Muslim who parties every night; Salma, from a traditional Christian family, is gay and works as a DJ and bartender; and Nour is a devout Muslim computer student whose Muslim fiancé rapes her.
“The women have chosen to seek a modern life by abandoning the customs and traditions of their home villages but at the same time, as ethnic Palestinians in Tel Aviv, they encounter discrimination,” director Maysaloun Hamoud told Reuters.
“They just can’t win.”
The film addresses issues that some of Israel’s Arabs – who make up about 20 percent of the country’s 8.5 million people – prefer not to see on screen.
https://youtu.be/fPiVZj8Mm7o
An Israeli film with an Arab director, Arab actors, and a Jewish producer, dealing with the reality of Arabs living in Tel Aviv, in a very real and human way – this is the stuff of nightmares for those falsely claiming Israel is an “Apartheid” state.
Then again, so is Israel picking an Arabic-speaking film as its submission for the Oscars in the best foreign-language film category.
Facts can be so inconvenient for some.
