Luxembourg’s Oscar® 2019 Entry for Best International Feature‘Tel Aviv on Fire’
The Closing Night Film at the Israel Film Festival Los Angeles, daring and funny…how can Palestinians criticize Israelis and Israelis criticize Palestinians? Make a comedy like ‘Tel Aviv on Fire’. In this interview with the director and co-writer, Sameh Zoabi, we explore the power and pitfalls of comedy in the international market place.
Commonly considered outside of the “arthouse” genre, comedy is a little looked down on by cinephiles. But this notion is belied by the social-political comedies of Ernst Lubitsch or Charlie Chaplin…and Life is Beautiful did win the Oscar in 1998.
Tel Aviv on Fire is about Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man who becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise — until the soldier and the show’s financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle.
How was the film financed?
Tel Aviv on Fire, a Palestinian-Israeli-Luxembourger coproduction had to compete against dramas for funding at home but was also funded by Luxembourg, France, and Belgium. At home it was Katriel Schory, head of the Israel Film Fund who first believed in this film. As it is always hard for comedy to compete with arthouse dramas, Katriel established a comedy section at the fund which granted the film its first funding. After that, the search for a European partner and seeking coproduction in Europe started. Sama Films and the Luxembourg Film Fund became the main partners in the film, raising the largest portion of the budget. As 70% was shot in Luxembourg with a local creative team, it was natural for Luxembourg to submit it for the Academy Award.
Says the director, Sameh Zoabi:
Israelis don’t like to see themselves as “occupiers”, but to see it otherwise is an illusion. I, in turn, detest the term “Israeli-Arab”. I considers myself a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. The label ”Israeli-Arab” denies Palestine’s existence now or ever.
This film, while beginning when Salam has to go through the border control checkpoint, still avoids labels and each side is free to detest the other as they watch the soap opera “Tel Aviv on Fire” confuse matters through love and espionage.
I would think people would like to see a comedy about this thorny issue.
I am not sure if they do. It’s hard to imagine the funny side of the conflict. It is tragic. It’s a big challenge to make a comedy dealing with the Palestinian and Israeli reality. People take the region and the conflict very seriously, and any attempt to make a comedy can easily be misunderstood as not strong or not serious.
But I believe that comedy allows the freedom to discuss very serious issues in a more subtle manner. In my films, I try to entertain, but also to speak truthfully about the human condition of where my characters live. I think my film tries to take a step back from the heated violent reality to remind people that Jews and Arabs have more in common than they really want to believe.
There is a way forward to a better future if the occupation ends and people look to each other eye to eye as equal human beings and not as an occupied and occupied, because nothing happens with force, we have seen this through history.
How do you work together?
I worked with my co writer Dan Kleinman for almost a year just to outline the story before we actually started writing the script. It was a tough balance of different styles of writing.
On one hand, writing the daily reality of my main characters which deals with Salam’s encounters both on the TV set/studio and outside on the street. We are with Salam at the checkpoint and his neighborhood where he encounters his love interest.
On the other hand, the soap opera that is different and requires over dramatic writing, which was very hard.
We have never written a soap opera before. What we found interesting in soap is that it requires no subtext. The characters exaggerate their emotions and their dialogue is straightforward. For us, that was the best tool to keep the politics in the film clear and alive while maintaining comedy. Because for people who watch cinema, Soap is a unbelievable and comic (if used well when interwoven with the daily reality) and this is exactly what we did.
How did you cast these roles?
I love casting. I write with my characters in mind, their postures, gestures, etc. So Salam was kind of a schlemiel…
I can see…Kais Nashif looks like a bit of a schlemiel, thin and stooped over like he is.
Kais Nashif is a well known Palestinian actor. He previously started in the first Oscar-nominated film from Palestine, Paradis Now (2005) He is known from many other films, as well as some TV shows. He splits his time living between Tel Aviv and Berlin. He is known for very dramatic roles. This is his first comedic role. It was a risk to cast Kais in a comedy, but he brought a deeper, more complex, melancholy side to Salam than is in the script, which helped create a more interesting arc to his character.
A big challenge in casting the film was to find the best match of energy and chemistry between my main character, Salam, and the Israeli officer, Assi. Their dynamic relationship stands at the core of the film. I found that the nuanced, minimalist acting by Kais Nashif as Salam alongside the very energetic Yaniv Biton as Assi gave me the most comedy and inner strength of the characters. Unlike Nashif, Yaniv comes from a more comedic background.
Watch the trailer here and you will see. what I mean about his being a schlemiel.
So let’s talk more about comedy which they say does not travel well internationally.
My first short film, a drama, won a prize in Cannes. And it would have been natural to continue in the same style after, but I wanted to make a film with a comedic tone.
Comedy can be easily seen as pure entertainment, and not “strong enough“ in the way it reflects harsh daily reality. As a result, I would say that it was hard for my first feature Man Without a Cellphone to travel in the major film festivals, especially when you compare it with other dramatic films coming from the Middle East — films that clearly deal with pressing, direct and traumatic issues people face daily.
But for me, the tone of using comedy was inspired by upbringing. It is part of that daily reality. Humor is an essential mechanism for my people to deal with the harsh daily reality of experiencing injustice.
But humor can also be local, and it might not travel internationally easily. But then that becomes the work of the filmmaker, to ensure the universal appeal of the story and not fall into the trap of local humor.
Although my first feature was not commercially a big success or was not rewarded in major A list festivals, it still managed to win many audience awards around the world. It was appreciated by the audience each time it screened.
What’s funny about this experience is that Jewish Audiences claimed that the humor is Jewish and Arab audience claimed the humor is Palestinian. If we can fight over humor, we are in good shape.
How did it get into the first festival it played and what did you get out of its being there?
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it received a very long standing ovation. And the main actor, Kais Nashif won the Best Actor Award in the Orizonti Section.
In the process of making the film — especially towards the end when the film was in post-production, gearing up for festivals and distribution — I still faced the same issues: Would the film be seen only for its comedic appeal and entertainment or will it cross over to the Arthouse world of “meaningful film,“ hence find a home at a major film festival like Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Berlin etc? These festivals became a major player in launching the journey of successful international films.
Finally the doubts about the film ended when Venice film festival showed and awarded the film. Our first screening was to 1,700 audience members laughing and appreciating the political layers in the film.
After that the film was sold and distributed in many countries around the world. We also won many major awards. So in many ways, it was both a critical and commercial success. It’s a good moment when you try to define your style and eventually stick to it, and see it succeeding.
How was the movie received in Israel and Palestine?
The way Salam managed in the film to make everyone happy, so does the film. It is amazing how the film is connecting with both audiences in the same way, which proves my point that we have more in common than the politicians are trying to tell us. We need to remind people not to lose their humanity with the violent rhetoric that politicians keep playing with to create the disconnected reality of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ That is the core of racism and hatred that is spreading around the world now and not only in the Middle East. As artists we can make work that bridges people together, and why not?
Sameh Zoabi now lives in New York and teaches core classes in directing, production and screenwriting at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. With the success of Tel Aviv on Fire and with the hope for a spot at the 2020 Academy Awards, Zoabi is now working on his first English language feature film here in the US. He is signed with WME, one of the major talent agencies in Hollywood.
Zoabi was born and raised in Iksal, a Palestinian village near the city of Nazareth.
He graduated from Tel Aviv University with a dual degree in Film Studies and English Literature. Zoabi then received a Fulbright Fellowship to study Filmmaking at Columbia University, earning an M.F.A. in 2005.
Zoabi’s work has been shown in many international film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Sundance, Karlovy Vary, and New York Film Festival. A selection of Zoabi’s notable work includes a short film titled Be Quiet (2005) for which received a prize at the Cannes Film Festival-Cinefondation Selection. His feature film debut, Man Without a Cell Phone (2010), won several audience awards as well as the Golden Antigone at the 2011 Montpellier Film Festival. His second feature film, Under the Same Sun (2013) was about peace between Israel and Palestinians. Zoabi wrote the original script of The Idol (2015), directed by Hany Abu Assad, which had its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival.
This is Sameh’s third film as a director, second film as a writer-director and fourth as a writer. He wrote the script for Hany Abu-Assad’s Gaza story The idol, a film I loved and for which I interviewed Hany Abu-Assad.
International sales by Indie Sales. U.S. theatrical release by Cohen Media.
It has also sold to
- United King Films Distribution (Israel)
- trigon-film (Switzerland)
- Academy Two (Italy)
- At Entertainment (Japan)
- Bulgaria Film Vision (Bulgaria)
- Haut et Court (France)
- MFA, (Germany)
- RTC (Germany)
- Alive Vertrieb und Marketing (Germany) (DVD release through)
- MFA+ Filmdistribution (2019) (Germany) (DVD)
- Mooov Film Distribution(Benelux)
- Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF) (Belgium TV)
- BE TV (2019) (Belgium) (TV)
- Seven Films (Greece)
- Surtsey (Spain)
- Edge (Scandinavia, Iceland, Baltics)
