Ajami is yet another film in which the director seems to think it is artistically meaningful to switch amongst various stories and tell it all out of order. It says a lot that Roger Ebert, as experienced a critic as one could hope for, gets the plot wrong in his review of Ajami.
Arab teenagers are thrust into a world of tragedy as a result of a gang-related blood feud and cocaine dealing. Along the way, everyone suffers: Muslims, Jews and Christians. If this film had been about ethnic conflict in any part of the world other than Israel and Palestine, it never would have been nominated. Like The Milk of Sorrow, Ajami is a film made for critics more than for a general audience.
