The Cousin (Ha Ben Dod) written, directed and starring Tzahi Grad; Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles; 93 minutes; to be shown during the San Diego International Jewish Film Festival at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, February 12, at Reading Cinemas Town Square, 4665 Clairemont Drive, San Diego.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Everyone has feelings of racism, suggests Naftali (Tzahi Grad), the protagonist in this drama focusing on Arab and Jewish relations in Israel. The question is whether you give into that racism or do you fight it?
The question becomes more than hypothetical after Naftali, a television personality, hires Fahed (Ala Dahka), an Arab day worker, to re-plaster and paint a small house that Naftali wants to use as his home office. After a village girl (May Stamker) is traumatized by a man who molested her, suspicion immediately falls upon Fahed. On the barest of circumstantial evidence, the police arrest him. Naftali, convinced that Fahed is a gentle and good soul, bails him out of jail before the incompetent police remember to take a photo of Fahed to show to the girl.
Naftali brings Fahed back to finish the project, but neighbors, already convinced that it was Fahed who did it, circle around the little house, intent on taking his photo and showing it to the girl for proof. The more that Naftali defends Fahed against these intrusive attacks, the more tense becomes the situation.
When night falls, Naftali invites Fahed to sleep at his house, much to the distress of his wife Yael (Osnat Fishman), who worries about the safety of their daughter and son, played respectively by Alma Grad Cohen and Ben Grad Cohen. When an electrical short-circuit plunges their home into darkness, paranoia runs deeper, and even Naftali’s racism is let out of the box.
Juxtaposed with the anger and hate expressed by the adults are the kindness and curiosity that the two children feel towards their visitor. Watching Fahed spread out a prayer rug and then prostrating himself upon it, they think that he is sleeping He explains that he is praying towards Mecca, and asks if they know what Mecca is. When they say “no,” he shows them photographs on his cell phone of the Kaaba, the cube-shaped black building that Muslims believe stands on the remnants of a building constructed by the patriarch Abraham and his first son Ishmael. In that Ishmael and Isaac were brothers, Jews and Arabs are cousins, he explained.
If so, there is a lot of trouble in the family. Many in the audience will squirm as they watch their fellow Jews give into their racism.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com