AJFF Selects: Tel Aviv on Fire

Join AJFF in June for their next AJFF Selects screening, Tel Aviv on Fire. The film is a big-hearted satire that follows a charming thirtysomething Palestinian slacker, Salam (Kais Nashef), as he drives between Jerusalem and the West Bank for his lowly job as a production assistant on a cheesy soap opera, where his uncle is a top exec. The TV show, whose action is set just before and during the Six Day War, is stilted and melodramatic but has a devoted following in both Israel and the Territories. Stopped each day at a checkpoint to reach the television studio, Salam crosses paths with an authoritarian Israeli commander Assi (Yaniv Biton), who begins contributing his own ideas for the show. Aspiring to make it as a screenwriter, Salam becomes entangled in an absurd series of quid pro quos, the action jumping slyly among fiction, fact and farce in skewering Middle East politics. Doors open at 7:10 PM.