This is delicious: The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) has defied BDS, showing 5 films from Israel (hat tip: B’nai Brith Canada).
You can see the TPFF’s schedule below (click image to enlarge). I have marked the Israeli films:
- Personal Affairs
- In Between
- Jerusalem, We Are Here
- Looted and Hidden
- Rubber Coated Steel
While most of them could be characterized as anti-Israel, not all of them are.
Such as In Between, which I have posted about before.
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.
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.
As Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada, says, “This development shows the utter failure of the BDS campaign in Canada. By showcasing Israeli cinema, TPFF has supported the Israeli economy and the arts, despite fierce opposition from some Palestinian-Canadian figures.”
