Ali Nassar's Film Premieres at L.A. Israeli Festival

Arab Israeli filmmaker Ali Nassar's new feature film, "In the 9th Month," is a tragic love story told in the context of a subjugated people who may still transcend their problems through a young boy, Amal (Hope). It premiered in Los Angeles at this city's 19th Israeli Film Festival.

Nassar was in town for the 10-day event along with Palestinian actress Nisreen Faour, who made her film debut in the role of Samira. After studying acting in Tel Aviv, Faour has appeared in theater productions for 11 years, particularly with the Haifa Deaf Theater.

The film represents the second entry for director Nassar, whose 1998 film, "The Milky Way," was shown at the 15th Los Angeles Israeli Film Festival.

"In the 9th Month," which Nassar wrote and directed, tells the story of Samira and Khalil (Juliano Khamis), who were born and wed in a small town in the Galilee. For reasons not explained, Khalil was exiled to Lebanon and, after 10 years, he secretly crosses the border to join his wife.

Only Khalil's brother Ahmad (Ashraf Barhoum) is aware of Khalil's return, and it is Ahmad who must surreptitiously take Samira late at night to rendezvous with her husband in a remote cave.

The villagers live under conditions tightly controlled by Israeli authorities, and tensions are high. When a young boy vanishes into thin air, ancient stories of the Ottoman period are revived about a kidnapper who "drags his buttocks in a basket" and sells abducted children to the Jews.

As the search for the boy grows more futile, his grieving father accuses Ahmad of being the kidnapper, for everyone knows Ahmad has been sneaking through the streets late at night (to meet secretly with his sister-in-law Samira, or to abduct children?).

The film offers dream sequences between scenes in 1991, when Samira and Khalil are secretly united, and 2001, when their child, Amal (Wisam Nassar), who was born from that reunion, is being raised by his Uncle Ahmad.

Nassar recruited his own 10-year-old son, Wisam, to play the role of the orphaned son of Samira and Khalil. The film director proudly describes Wisam as a natural actor. The only scene the child was reluctant to perform was the dream scene, in which scores of women bare their breasts to the heavens in supplication for the sons who have disappeared or died.

This scene, the director acknowledged, could make the film taboo in Muslim countries. "But," he countered, "this is a custom in some regions in which women open their garments and expose their breasts to God in a plea to heal loved ones or in supplication for the return of missing ones."

Stated UCLA-educated Arab Israeli filmmaker Hanna Elias: "It would be a shame if 'In the 9th Month' is banned for this reason, or because it received funding from Israel. After all, we're 20 percent of the Israeli population and we pay taxes. It's our right to ask for a share of the pie, and Israeli Jews should get used to sharing with us."

Elia was referring to the $600,000 Nassar received from the Israeli Film Fund (IFF) to produce and distribute "In the 9th Month."

Explained David Lipkind, IFF head of finance and production: "We help finance six to eight films a year; the two Arab films we've backed are both by Ali Nassar."

Nassar's film was shot over a period of 25 days by two cameramen in Jaffa, Jerusalem, Ramla and the Galilee. The budget was tight—cut in half from his original estimate. The film now belongs to Nassar, and it will be up to him to find sources open to distribution.

The solution may be to screen the film, which is in Arabic with English subtitles, to Arab communities in the West.

Israeli critics praised the film when it played in the Jerusalem Film Festival, but the general Israeli public was not enthusiastic.

"If my film had come from Iran, it would have been a sellout," Nassar grimaced.

Nassar already is working on a new script, entitled "Searching for Ahmad." The bearded Galilean told the Washington Report that his forthcoming story takes place from 1980 to the present, and that Ahmad symbolizes the ideologically lost leftists following the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

The filmmaker, who eschews city life, works and lives with his wife and three children in the village of Araba—population 18,000—in the northern Galilee, where he once herded sheep.

STORIES FROM THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
“Bawdy, colloquial and wondrously inventive, these tales have influenced such disparate writers as John Barth, DM Thomas, Jorge Luis Borges and Martin Amis, all of whom have embraced Shahrazad as the ultimate symbol of the storyteller’s art” – NY Times

International performers bring to life tales from one of the world’s literary masterpieces:

CHIRINE EL ANSARY (Egypt) - actress, storyteller, dancer, has performed stories from The Arabian Nights in Europe, USA and across the Arab World.

HANITA HENDELMAN & NISREEN FAOUR-ALI. (Israel) - Jewish and Arabic artists come together to tell one story in three languages: Arabic, Hebrew & English, accompanied by songs and live music on ud, daf, darbuka & flute.

by Dario Fo & Franka Rama

 

-A Happy Woman

Translator Majed Al-Khateeb
Concept & Direction Kamel Pasha
Starring Nesreen Fa'oor