The Day After the Oscars: Ajami, Israel and awards

 

Published in the Jerusalem Post on March 9, 2010

        Just before the Academy Awards ceremony, a figure in the Israeli media said that he was concerned that, in light of statements by Scandar Copti, one of the co-directors of Ajami, the Israeli nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, that Copti was likely to get up on stage and make a speech that would be insulting to and embarrassing for Israel.

            “That should be our big problem,” I told him. “That an Israeli film wins an Oscar and the director says something embarrassing.”

Scene from the film, "Ajami"/TelAviv-Fever

            As it turns out, that wasn’t our big problem. Ajami did not win the Oscar, which instead went to El Secret de Sus Ojos, an Argentine film by Juan Jose Campanella. Israel has never won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, despite being nominated nine times (including three times in as many years).

            Every time Israel does not win this award, Israelis ask me the next day, “Why didn’t it win? Is it anti-Semitism?” And one day, when Israel does win (and it will eventually), the director (or directors) will get up and say something that will embarrass and annoy some Israelis. That’s an Oscar prediction I’ll bet money on.

            But what can we make of this year’s controversy, which marred the image of a unified Israel many here hoped that Ajami would promote, since it was co-directed by Copti, an Israeli-Arab Christian from Jaffa, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew from Haifa? Tensions have been brewing for the past month, since two of Copti’s brothers (among others) were arrested in Jaffa on what they say were unjust charges, then subjected to police brutality. The day before the Oscars, Jaffa residents held a demonstration to protest the police conduct, which received more publicity than any similar demonstration has in the recent past. But what got some Israelis particularly apprehensive were statements made by Scandar Copti while promoting the film before the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles, notably this one:  “You have an Israeli director and a Palestinian director; you have Israeli actors and Palestinian actors. The movie represents Israel, but I don’t; I can’t represent a country that doesn’t represent me.”

            Co-director Yaron Shani countered the statement by saying that Ajami “is an Israeli movie, it takes place in Israel, it speaks Israeli, it deals with problems in Israel.”

            That the film received a significant portion of its budget from the Israel Film Fund, a government fund, which has been promoting Ajami for months on its website and elsewhere, has never been in dispute.  Copti is certainly correct in saying that the movie represents Israel. And while he may feel it does not represent him, in fact, it does. It represents the messy reality of his life in a complicated country, where many groups are thrown together in a geographically small area. There are conflicts among all the groups, and within all the groups: Between Jews and Arabs, Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians, West Bank Palestinians and Bedouins – and among all these groups and representatives of the Israeli government (and other authorities, both formal and informal), including and often, the police. These conflicts are the subject of the film Ajami, made with money from a government that Copti doesn’t feel he represents. I can sympathize with his anger over the treatment of his family and friends, but he made a choice and it cannot be undone. It can’t be clean to take money from a government and dirty to acknowledge what that money has bought. The success of the film has brought a great deal of attention to the Ajami neighborhood. Audiences all over the world (including Oscar voters  and the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, which awarded Ajami a Special Mention last spring) have become aware of the neighborhood and its complex reality since the release of the film. I’m sure there have been many complaints of police brutality in the Ajami neighborhood over the years, but due to the film, this recent one became front-page news.  It’s hard not to see that as a victory of sorts.

            Copti may be missing an opportunity to criticize his own government from the perspective of a citizen who represents a minority here.  Whether he likes the way it feels or not, he has made his movie and through it, his voice be heard. When he speaks up, people do listen, as he has just learned, if he didn’t realize it before. And they listen because he is an Israeli and they care very much about what those who represent Israel have to say.

            We haven’t heard the last of either Copti or Shani, who are just beginning their careers. In terms of the Oscars, let’s hope for better luck next year. And, for the record, the winning Argentine film is excellent. Ajami’s loss certainly has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or anti-Israel sentiment. The voters simply preferred a different film. That’s show business.

The Ajami Controversy and the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race

 

                The Academy Awards ceremony begins in Los Angeles tonight and the question here is: Will the third time be a charm? Will Israel’s third Oscar nomination in as many years bring gold to the blue-and-white?

Scandar Copti (left) and Yaron Shani, the directors of Ajami/Courtesy of Tel Aviv-Fever

                Although this may be a cliché, Israel has already won by being there. The inclusion of Ajami, directed by Scandar Copti, an Israeli-Arab Christian from Jaffa, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew, is a triumph, both for the directors and for the entire Israeli film industry, especially in light of certain recent events. Although Copti was quoted in the aftermath of allegations of police brutality against members of his family in Jaffa as saying he doesn’t feel he is representing Israel, in fact, he is.  Ajami received a significant part of its budget from the Israel Film Fund, a government body that is given great leeway in deciding what to films to invest in. I can certainly understand Copti’s outrage against the police and the government and have felt similar anger when friends of mine were arrested (for working at an improperly licensed radio station for which I also worked) and treated poorly while they were held in jail.

        But Ajami is in no way an apologia for this government. Rather, it is a realistic and impassioned portrait of Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood. It portrays the brutality and injustice that Copti is now reacting to and has moved a great many people, among them viewers around the world, the Oscar nominating committee, and juries at Cannes and many other film festival. It’s a complicated, messy fact that the Israeli-born Copti has grown up in Israel and took money from this government to fund this film. Ajami has taken the truth of the complicated, messy lives of Jaffa’s residents and brought it out into the light for the world to see. He made the right decision to accept government funding and film this deeply personal story (along with his co-director Yaron Shani, who worked with Copti to bring their joint vision to the screen). The contradictions and conflict that have plagued Copti’s family and friends are all up there on the screen, just where they should be. I think Copti is missing an opportunity to criticize his own government from the perspective of a citizen who represents a minority here, much as African Americans have criticized the US government. In any case, it can’t be clean to take money from a government and dirty to acknowledge what that money has bought.

      If you go back a few months ago, a group of prominent filmmakers asked the Toronto International Film Festival organizers to reconsider their decision to feature a week of films spotlighting Tel Aviv. Ajami was shown at Toronto this year, although in a different category, but it was clearly identified as an Israeli film. Yaron Shani told me that the Ajami screenings were sold out at Toronto. It’s inconceivable to me that Shani and Copti would have wanted Toronto audiences to boycott their film.

      When the organizers refused to back down and the week marking Tel Aviv’s centennial went on as planned, some filmmakers boycotted the festival. The arrogance and ignorance of the boycotters is a subject for another article.  But it is both ironic and laughable in light of the fact that the movies that sparked their indignation were critical of almost every aspect of Israeli society, including government policies, and, in almost all cases, received significant government funding. There have been rumblings about boycotts at other festivals, and some filmmakers, notably Ken Loach, have refused to attend film festivals in Israel. For the most part, though, the international filmmaking community has been remained very open to Israeli films, and this third Oscar nomination in a row –which follows nominations for Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, both films about the first Lebanon War – just underscores that fact.

                Copti and Shani are the toast of Hollywood, and are undoubtedly meeting some of the filmmakers who inspired them as they visit Los Angeles to attend the ceremony. If they choose, they can sign a contract with a Hollywood agent who will promote them in the US. As they prepared for their trip to the Oscars, along with their producers and eight of their actors, their publicist (when the film was shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival last summer, they didn’t even have one) said they were too busy for interviews. Their star, Shahir Kabaha, one of the many non-professional actors they used in the film, had to take a vacation from his job making bourekas at his father’s bakery in Jaffa to make trip to Los Angeles. But the two co-directors have launched what is likely to be long careers in the film industry.

                But will they actually come home with an Oscar? The truth is, the Best Foreign Language Film category is the hardest to pick and I say this as someone who has been predicting the Oscars for newspapers for over 14 years. It’s a category that has a very precise and unusual set of rules for nominating and voting. Every country is allowed to submit one movie to be considered for the five nominations. This film is  usually the movie that wins its local Oscar (in our case, the Ophir Award), although in some countries there is a committee that selects the nominee. Whereas once, few countries outside Europe and Japan submitted film, this year 65 countries submitted a film. Most of these movies have not yet opened in the US, and few ever will. The selection of the nominees is a long, involved process, involving committees on both coasts of America. The voting process is also unusual. Only voters who have seen all five nominees in theaters and can prove it (by means of a stamped card) are allowed to vote in this category. This rule is also in place in the short-film categories and for documentaries. It may sound odd, but it’s a sensible rule, because it insures that movies by the highest-profile filmmakers won’t automatically win. For example, voters might be tempted to pick a movie by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar because it might be the only film they had seen theatrically or even heard of in a given year.

But it also means that only Academy voters with the time and motivation to see all five nominees in a theater can vote. Now that might not seem to be asking a lot, but Academy members who are working will often be on the set from five in the morning till after midnight – not a lot of time to see five movies. Many voters in other categories see most of the nominees on DVD. Those who do vote in the Best Foreign Language Film category tend to be older and retired, and, critics say, more conservative. That might explain the fact that, often, the safest and most sentimental choices win, like last year’s unheralded film, Departures, from Japan, which beat Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, even though Waltz had won most of the critics’ awards and many film festival prizes. Waltz was an animated documentary about soldiers in the first Lebanon War, and was an unusual and demanding film.

    It’s a safe bet to assume that relatively few voters determine the outcome in this category. What no one knows is how few. I spoke this winter with a member of the Executive Nominating Committee in this category and asked whether it was possible that just 20 or so voters determined the outcome. She said it was possible and that it wouldn’t surprise her if the number wasn’t much higher than that.  

       So what competition does Ajami face? Conventional wisdom is that the film to beat is The White Ribbon, which won the Palme d’Or, the top prize, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Michael Haneke, this German film is set in a small town before World War I, where a series of unexplained and brutal crimes takes place. The film, which is in black and white, is a critique of the repressive child-rearing philosophy of that era, which many have theorized helped create the breeding grounds for Nazism. But it’s a slow, dark and heavy film with barely a single likable character, not the sort of movie Academy Award voters tend to enjoy. The French nominee, Un Prophete, directed by Jacques Audiard, won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. It is a gritty story of young Muslims in a French prison, and I fear it will appeal to the same viewers who might vote for Ajami. Audiences confused by the complexities of Ajami (Americans often can’t even tell when characters are speaking Hebrew or Arabic, and titles were added for the US release indicating which language is being spoken) may respond better to the less complicated storyline of Un Prophete. The nominee from Peru, The Milk of Sorrow, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The only nominee directed by a woman, Claudia Llosa, it tells the story of a woman living with the aftermath of a rape, but it has not generated the same buzz as the other nominees. Although I wish with all my heart that Ajami comes home with the Oscar, I feel that the most likely winner is the fifth nominee, The Secret in their Eyes, an Argentine film. It’s a suspenseful drama about a mysterious killing that took place years before that involves political corruption, features a well-drawn, sympathetic hero, and even has a bit of romance. Its director, Juan Jose Campanella, was nominated for an Oscar several years ago for Son of the Bride and Argentina has had its own cinematic renaissance in recent years. Few realize that Campanella has spent the last few years in Hollywood, directing episodes of such shows as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and has undoubtedly made a few friends there, which may come in handy when small numbers of voters determine the outcome of the award.

    But whatever film wins the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar on Sunday night, I hope that people will be dancing in the streets in Jaffa, and all over Israel. Once again, we have won much by being there.

 

 

 

 

Hannah Brown’s Oscar Picks for 2010

It’s Oscar time and for the third time in a row, Israel has a film among the nominees. Ajami co-directors Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti will be sitting in the auditorium, and many here in Israel will be waiting anxiously to see if Israel gets its first Oscar. But whether or not they go home with a gold statuette (more on that later), it’s a triumph that they were nominated for their first film, in a highly competitive category. Their nomination is especially sweet in a year in which prominent filmmakers called – unsuccessfully — for a boycott of Israeli films at the Toronto Film Festival.

It’s also an interesting year for many other reasons. For one, this is the first time since 1943 that there have been 10 Best Picture nominees rather than five. Now, everything but the kitchen sink has been nominated. For information on the complex new voting system, go to www.awardsdaily.com  , the all-Oscar-all-the-time Website that features links to many predict-the-awards contests.

And now, without further ado, my predictions for the awards:

BEST PICTURE  The consensus is that the real contest is between two very different films, the special-effects epic Avatar and The Hurt Locker, a tough film about the war in Iraq. They were directed by James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, respectively, who just happen to have once been married. Bigelow is only the fourth woman nominated for Best Director, and if she wins, she’ll be the first woman to win.

The spoiler in this category could be Inglourious Basterds.

Winner: The Hurt Locker.

BEST DIRECTOR

Winner: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

BEST ACTOR: This award will be a very, very deserved lifetime achievement award for Jeff Bridges, who plays an aging country music singer in Crazy Heart.

Winner: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

BEST ACTRESS: This is the hardest category to call. Meryl Streep, the most nominated actress in Oscar history, is probably not going to win for her sublime performance in Julie and Julia. This will be the year for Sandra Bullock, a very well- liked actress.

Winner: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: No one has a chance here but Christoph Waltz, who played the charming Nazi in Inglourious Basterds.

Winner: Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: This is another category dominated by a single performance, the comedian in Mo’Nque in the very unsympathetic role of the mother in Precious. I would love to see Anna Kendrick win for Up in the Air, this brilliant, fast-talking actress is the next Holly Hunter. But Kendrick will have other chances.

Winner: Mo’Nique for Precious

BEST SCREENPLAY AWARDS:

Winner, Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air

Winner, Best Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: This will be the most-watched category here, of course. Only voters who can prove they have seen all five nominated films at screenings (not on DVDs) by means of a stamped card can vote for this award. What this means, though, is that only Oscar voters with time to attend five screenings vote (conventional wisdom says that these voters tend to be semi-retired, older and more conservative). It also means that, theoretically, five or 10 people could be the only ones voting.

Ajami is a great achievement for first-time directors Copti and Shani, but French director Jacques Audiard’s Un Prophete covers similar ground (it’s a gritty prison drama about young Muslims, while Ajami is a gritty crime drama mostly about young Muslims). The Milk of Sorrow, the Peruvian nominee, is a kind of Latin-American Precious, and it is arguably the weakest of all the nominees. Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, which took the top prize at Cannes, is considered the frontrunner. But The White Ribbon is a slow, pretentious, black-and-white, relentlessly downbeat film about how repression and child abuse in pre-World War I Germany led to Nazism. Oscar voters traditionally don’t warm to this type of film, to put it mildly. So I’m going to go with the far more lively and accessible El Secret de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) from Argentine director Juan Jose Campanella.

Winner: El Secret de Sus Ojos.

I will be as happy as anyone if that last prediction is wrong and the winner turns out to be Ajami, but with Oscar, there’s always next year.