Ambitious Israeli Film "Ana Arabia" Screens at Venice Film Fest

The Israeli film " Ana Arabia" is competing for the Golden Lion award at the 70th Venice International Film Festival, and it makes a strong appeal for co-existence and understanding when looking at the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to reviewers.

Director Amos Gitai takes an intimate look, assisted by the fact that the whole film was shot on a single Steadicam, at the story of a young journalist researching the life of a Holocaust survivor who married a Palestinian construction worker, converted to Islam and began calling herself "Ana Arabia." The story takes her to the mixed and relatively harmonious Jaffa (Haifa), where the woman's family members live.

Gitai, known for his documentaries and features that highlight the lived experiences of those affected by the conflict, told reporters (in French) on Tuesday, "Filmmakers, artists, writers should ask questions and find ways through fiction to say that co-existence is possible, even in this oppressive moment in the region. Ideas are not weak things. There are money, machine guns and bombs, but ideas have also changed the planet, so we must not hesitate to propose ideas."

The film will compete for the Golden Lion against Scarlett Johansson's " Under the Skin," directed by Jonathan Glazer, a film The Independent described as a "laughably bad alien hitchhiker movie."

Here's the trailer for "Ana Arabia"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjVoiBtb0aU]