Strangers at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival

POSTED: Friday, October 31, 2008, 4:01 PM

Filed Under: Movies Film Fest

The plot unfolds like a Hebrew West Side Story, complete with young love, cultural conflict and disapproving friends. Rana (Lubna Azaval), a Palestinian expatriate, and Eyal (Liron Levo), an Israeli tourist, are both in Berlin for the World Cup Final. They cross paths on a train where they unknowingly switch identical backpacks and their romance begins while they examine one another’s luggage. When they meet to return their bags and begin to look for hotel rooms, they decide not to discuss politics. Instead, they bond over football (soccer).

The film, directed by Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv, began as an improvised short just weeks before the World Cup in Berlin. Azaval and Levo bring genuine chemistry to their on-the-fly dialogue, but a boom microphone disrupts that genuine quality when it enters the shot during the climax. Strangers does one thing right: it captures the affects of a complicated war on two young lovers. In one scene, the two are sitting in a hotel room, watching video of a violent attack on CNN. They both call home on their cell phones, hoping to find the real story. They hang up, reluctant to look at one another. Their whole relationship is summed up in silence.

Strangers, Sun., Nov. 2, 2 p.m., $10, Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St., pjff.org.

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