Wajib (2017)

WAJIB  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Annemarie Jacir
    Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri, Karma Zoabi
    Rana Almuddin, Maria Zriek, Tarik Kopty
You wouldn't even get through the door trying to pitch this movie in Hollywood. Its protagonists are two Palestinian Arabs, an aging schoolteacher and his expatriate son, driving around delivering wedding invitations in Nazareth. It's a knowing, street-level look at life in Israel's Arab community, reflected in the relationship between the two men. The younger one, an architect living in Italy, is a bit of a dandy, in red trousers and a pink printed shirt, his long hair tied back in a fashionable bun. He deplores the mounds of trash in the streets, the ubiquitous presence of Israeli soldiers and the prevailing fondness for covering up classic old buildings with pieces of tarp, and wonders how the old man can accommodate all that. For his father, accommodation is simply the price of survival, and he's spent a lifetime living with it. It's not the world as he'd like it to be, but that's the way it is. What divides them might be political, but what connects them is personal, and the ending quietly captures that. Just don't expect to see a Hollywood remake anytime soon.