Ajami is a complex, deep-going work. The performers are all non-professionals, and, as the directors explain, come from tough backgrounds.

| Mar 4, 2021

Ajami is not pretty and it's not heart-warming - the threat of violence is always looming - but it is emotionally gripping, and it puts you right in its midst.

| Aug 30, 2018

It's a dark, unsparing vision, yet what makes watching bearable, even pleasurable, is Copti and Shani's humane intelligence.

| May 17, 2018

What comes through is that the troubles besetting Muslims and Jews and their emotional responses are similar in nature. The people involved have so much in common.

| Jan 13, 2018

Its sense of ambiance, most apparent during scenes of simple conversation between characters, more than compensates for the cinematic overdetermination.

| Sep 24, 2014

Una contundente pera prima, narrada en forma fragmentaria a la manera de Amores Perros o Crash, que retrata con brutal honestidad la vida en un conflictivo vecindario de Jaffa. Estupendo elenco de actores no profesionales.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 2, 2011

Gripping modern-day drama about crime and tensions among the Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs.

| Original Score: A | Sep 21, 2010

... acutely insightful about the social divisions within Israel, but it examines them without scolding or sentimentality.

| Sep 4, 2010

A confident contemporary crime thriller that, yes, may rely on perhaps a few too many plot coincidences to hang together, but otherwise offers a bracing insight into a troubled situation without hectoring us with insipid platitudes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2010

Stories of violence, revenge and corruption smartly told by next-gen foreign filmmakers

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 30, 2010

The actors, every one of them new to their craft, make the everydayness of the picture indelible and real.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 24, 2010

The pattern of connections and coincidences is a little overschematic, but the movie has energy, especially in the grippingly real shooting scene at the beginning.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2010

A rare film that will force you to confront your own prejudices.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 17, 2010

Ajami has an appealingly rough-edged, authentic feel to it, thanks to some strong location work and the fact that the cast is drawn largely from non-professionals and real life locals.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2010

This is vividly challenging, utterly inclusive and heartfelt cinema. It's not only gripping to watch, but it'll open your eyes to the intractable human conundrums behind the blood-stained headlines.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 16, 2010

By showing how people fail to live together - in a film you could call Israel's City of God, with its sectarian-feuding story lent power and immediacy by improvisation and non-professional casting - Ajami shows how they might or should live together.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 16, 2010

Ajami may be set in Israel, but at times it plays more like an American gangster drama. The film does address the ethnic and social tensions that run through the country, but it does so in a nuanced and refreshingly clear-eyed way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 13, 2010

The movie is insightful in revealing how messy life can be with enemies living in close proximity to one another. The press notes point out the...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 11, 2010

While Quentin Tarantino used the narrative device to give his film a caffeinated jolt of hipster cool, co-directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani use it brilliantly to show the chaotic web of violence that traps Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2010

A deceptive movie, one that introduces its characters in the heat of violence, allows us to make conclusions based on what we see, then shatters our assumptions in the telling of how that moment came about.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 28, 2010