Ohad Knoller:
Yousef (Joe) Sweid:
Daniella Wircer:
Alon Friedmann:
Zohar Liba:
Lior Ashkenazi:

For writer-director Eytan Fox (Yossi & Jagger of Tribeca Film Festival 2003, Walk on Water), the hip neighborhood of Tel Aviv's Sheikin Street is like a bubble-a slacker paradise within a European-built city relatively sheltered from violence. For three roommates-record store clerk Noam (Ohad Knoller, star of Yossi & Jagger and Best Actor, Tribeca Film Festival 2003); shop girl and aspiring screenwriter Lulu (Daniela Wircer); and restaurant manager and aspiring fashion designer Yelli (Alon Friedman), who never wants to leave Tel Aviv; it's where twenty- somethings watch Israeli Idol, debate the merits of George Michael vs. Morrissey, and throw a “Rave Against the Occupation,” which is really an excuse to take Ecstasy and dance on the beach. When Noam meets a young Palestinian man named Ashraf (Yousef Sweid) at a checkpoint on the Israeli-Palestinian border, it isn't long before the two start a passionate affair. Ashraf, whose sister is marrying a Hamas soldier named Jihad (Shredi Jabarin), and who himself is already betrothed to his future brother-in-law's sister, soon moves in with the roommates under a Hebrew name, experiencing a life of sexual freedom unimaginable in the Arab world-where there isn't even a phrase for “out of the closet.” Wearing hipster t-shirts, listening to Tim Buckley, and holding hands with Noam as they take in Walk on Water star Lior Ashkenazi in a production of Bent, Ashraf seems carefree…until the bubble bursts. Fox and co-screenwriter Gal Uchovsky intelligently spin this new-age Romeo and Juliet story that poses the question: can true love bridge irreconcilable differences?

---Ann Lewinson