Jaffa
Jaffa
| 11 October 2009 (USA)
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In the city of Jaffa; a young girl plans to run away with her secret lover, when a tragedy forever changes the course of their lives. Jaffa is a mixed Arabic - Jewish seaside city near Tel Aviv, where Reuven Wolf (Moni Moshonov) has a garage for repairing cars. His wife Ossi (Ronit Elkabetz), a vain, self-centered woman, just makes everybody's life difficult. The couple's daughter, Mali Wolf (Dana Ivgy), has secretly fallen in love with her childhood friend, the young Toufik (newcomer Mahmud Shalaby), a hard-working youth who has come as a helping hand to his Israeli-Arab father Hassan, a long-time mechanic working for Reuven.

Reviews
Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
eyesh-97835 Contains spoilerThe movie has big hole in its story.It ignores the facts the the death was an accident CAUSED by the brother. And when the writer had a great moment to air all of it out ( Fairness, religion, prejudice ...) they chickened out. WHAT A SHAME. Waset of a great drama., The ending is moving. How about another line, the daughter could have blamed the son and and her brother for the fact that he ruined her life, and was forced to have a child grow without a father. Acting is good. Also he is not a Palestinian , I jaffa is a mix of Jewish and Arabs. they do not call them self Palestinian.
Martin Teller I was fond of Keren Yedaya's first feature, Or, so I was looking forward to her second. I found it a bit underwhelming. Dana Igvy returns as the lead, but here her performance is less impressive. I think what I missed most was the naturalistic tone, this felt more contrived and artificial. Perhaps this would have been less problematic if the film had some kind of style to it, but it's rather flat. Despite this, it's not a bad movie... the characterizations are reasonably compelling and so forth. It just didn't really grab me, and I don't think it adds all that much to the Israel-Palestine discussion. Still, I'm interested in what else Yedaya has to offer.
Seemp deHond For once let's just separate the politics from the movie reviews for once when reviewing titles from anywhere in the middle east or war zones. This is a typical love story as they are made all over the world and.... boy is it worth watching.When the spoiled and jealous son of Reuvens body shop/garage provokes one of the mechanics Toufik one time to many all lives involved are forced to change. Toufik and the daughter of the owner Mali have their own secrets and over time things can no longer be hidden.It's a solid love story, drama. Well acted, well done. No big political issues or statements here. Just a very solid drama, well told, well acted with likable characters. Thats good enough already without political statement.
bdsaustin Israel is receiving a storm of criticism these days for its merciless treatment of Palestinians under occupation. Often overlooked are the Palestinians who live on the Israeli side of the apartheid wall, the Arab-Israelis of Palestinian descent. Amidst this storm of criticism arrives the movie Jaffa. What Jaffa does for both Jews and Arabs in Israel is portray them as human. Palestinians are not cast as terrorists or as suppressed peasants. Jews are not cast as brainy but thrifty business moguls.Instead the moviegoer gets to look into the lives of these two groups of people and judge for themselves. Jaffa does not, however, show the true nasty side of Israel; it ignores the fact that tens of miles away, Palestinians are being completely deprived of their basic human rights, squeezed together behind a cruel apartheid wall by Israel.Is Israel even ready for a movie like Jaffa? I will argue that yes, it is time for Israelis to accept Palestinians, as people deserving of equal rights in a society that has so long denied them that. Thank you, Keron Yedaya, for what the world hopes is just the first of many Israeli made movies to come that give fair treatment to Arab-Israelis of Palestinian descent.