Posted on 01/09/2026 10:20:38 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
‘I truly believe humor is a tool. It’s a tool that helps people release emotional tension, a tool that helps people feel safe. Very often, when someone tells me a joke or makes me laugh, even about something very small, it feels like a gesture – like they’ve seen me and said, ‘I want to make you feel a little better,’” said Zohar Shahar, one of the co-directors of Bella, a very funny and audacious new Israeli comedy, with a touch of drama, that dares to find laughs in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It opened in theaters around the country on Thursday.
That Bella makes fun of a subject so serious that it’s virtually taboo to laugh about is not the only unusual aspect of the film. There is also the fact that Shahar is Jewish, her co-director, Jamal Khalaile, is Palestinian, and that the production features a mixed Jewish-Arab cast and crew.
So by its very nature, the film challenges those who believe that the two groups can never live together.
Bella, which premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival last summer, tells an intricate story that works on two levels. On the surface, it follows two couples, one Arab and one Jewish, and a dove...
Yaki (Elisha Banai) and his adopted Arab brother, Bilal (Hanna Birakh), meet again for the first time in years after the death of their father, Yitzhak...When Yaki returns to Israel for the funeral with his girlfriend, Limor (Jade Daiches Weeks), he reluctantly reconnects with Bilal, a Palestinian orphan whom Yitzhak had taken in...
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
Title sounds like a joke on “Gran Torino.” It starts, “A Jew, an Arab and a priest all go into a bar...”
I’d be willing to watch that.
I wish it would go to a theater, but it sounds like a Netflix kind of project. Lots of money for production on location, very little oversight or stumbling blocks in the dialog.
Modern adjustment from the Producers:
Springtime for Abdul and Palestine!
Don’t be stupid be a smarty come and join the Hamas party!
I liked the way this movie showed Jew and
Palestinian relationships in the United States.
“You don’t mess with the Zohan.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0960144/
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