Ethni/cities

Globalisation in a region and in a state whose population has come from all over the world. Changes caused by a dynamic mixture of economic, ethnic and religious motives. Two films and a talk with Eyal Halfon, the director of What a Wonderful Place (invited), on the clash of values, traditions, town and countryside.

19h

Blood Engagement

Documentary by Ada Ushpiz , Israel 2004, 94 min, English subtitles

Eighty per cent of (Jewish) Ethiopian prisoners in Israeli gaols have been imprisoned for violence against women. Urban realities have called in question the patriarchal order in this community, which has only migrated to urban centres from rural Ethiopia over the past fifteen years. For two years, the film has followed the story of two men, their families and their victims. One of them was sentenced to prison for murdering his girlfriend, the other stabbed his wife twelve times. The fate of the two men is symptomatic of the way many immigrants clash with a society that is unable to offer them any orientation.

21h

Janem Janem

Feature film by Haïm Bouzaglo , Israel/France 2005, 100 min

Aldi, a high-school teacher and a class tutor, 40 years old, is in a midlife crisis. He just returned from a long army reserve service in Jenin and informs the school's principal that he is not coming back to teach. Aldi goes for a journey in his own country. 15 years after his previous journey he travels through Israel 2003. The Arab laborers were replaced by Turks and Romanians; the hotel from the previous journey has become a shabby hostel accommodating paperless immigrants. An unknown world appears to him in the middle of Tel Aviv. Aldi examines the new situation; he is attracted to the hotel receptionist, a Russian girl escaping from an Israeli who had "bought" her to be his wife. Gradually he is drawn into the world of the foreign workers, while observing them from their own point of view.