Junction 48 is an Israeli movie on drama that features Tamer Nafar, the lead singer of the rap group DAM, as Kareem who is a rap artist.
The story revolves around Kareem’s dream to become a famous rap artist in a mixed Jewish and Palestinian city called Lod which lies close to Tel Aviv. Manar, played by Samar Qupty, is also a talented singer, but as a Palestinian woman, she has to endure a lot. For example, after getting photoshopped on a concert’s hip-hop poster, she gets attacked by her conservative cousins who threaten her to stay silent and perform to the public. As a teen, she’s constantly surrounded by older boys which makes it hard for her to deal with the ethnic discrimination she experiences as a female Palestinian. To add on top of that, she has to confront violent, racist police, and rappers too.
At the film festival where he was awarded the Panorama Audience Award for best fiction film, Israeli director, Udi Aloni, received a lot of attention in Berlin for labeling the Israeli government ‘fascist’ during a Junction 48’s Q&A session. He also urged Germans to stop providing submarines to Israel and brought up the matter of Mohammed al-Qiq the Palestinian hunger striker which died while imprisoned under accusation without being charged.
What Aloni says in Berlin is that it is not the state of Israel that is fascist, but the government. The film does not contain much or even a believable attempt at portraying the government, the authorities that wish to remove a house and build a coexistence museum have no face; the police stops of young Palestinians are no more or less cruel than they are elsewhere in the world.My impression is that the drug bust cops in the first part of the movie owe the entire population that recognizes drug dealing as a plague something.
Kareem’s performance at the club did not exclude the nationalistic rap singers for them to be particularly extreme in their racist vileness and slightly ridiculous in their violence.
Basically, the environment which in certain cases is set up by government personnel in the film, seems dreadfully global in its classism and systemic rot.
However, tick in mind that Lod also suffers from the same corruption or negligence. In addition to Kareem, there is his charming mother, boyfriend rapper Manar, his friends from the neighborhood and a few more features which makes LOD itself a character in the movie. The city with Israel’s Jewish drug abuse population is inhabited alongside a smaller Palestinian population.
The movie starts with a drug deal being executed through holes in the broken walls of a filthy and ruined building. It goes on to show the disgusting dirt roads and low quality shanty houses and within the backdrop Kenya’s most violent and crime infested city.
It is quite evident there is more to the issue of Aloni’s comment in the film versus during the Q&A session and thematic concerns. For instance, the picture of “coexistence” the film presents is indeed peaceful but there are elements of vigilantary concern. A Jewish “club-goer” is kind-hearted regardless of whether the music playing is Hebrew nationalist rap or politics cased hip hop in Arabic.
These behavioral flaws are deeply embedded in the general structure of the film as well. Even after losing his father in the accident, Kareem and his mother tend to recover decently fast. Similarly, when Kareem gets a job in one more Israeli club that mostly speaks and sings in Hebrew, he is sold to the audience although he writes most of his songs in Arabic. Immediately after his first performance, he was scheduled to appear for a TV interview on one of the popular morning shows.
However, all this is not to indicate that some moments of the film do not capture the underlying tension of the larger political aspects of power and politics in the film. And yet, the real tension that would be beneficial to the story often fails to reach the point of climax.
Kareem becomes friends with nationalistic rappers that perform before he goes to the club and they invite him and his bandmates to a party. At this party, they are together with him in a hot tub and tell him the story of how one of their relatives who happens to be a checkpoint soldier had the audacity to humiliate an elderly Palestinian man and his son which eventually results in arrest when the son does not comply. The situation is filled with tension and full of innuendo. However, the rappers appear too silly to follow up on any implied threats.
In addition, there is a mirror where Kareem is seen, but it is hopelessly out of focus, which means that there is no chance of capturing his reaction in such a scenario. Thus, a confrontation which would have been beneficial in building up the film’s tension is lost all too often in between the more dull and carefree segments that make up the rest of the plot.
Out of all Nafar’s fierce charm, the too positive and soft nature of the film does not seem to exploit the rest of the film’s opportunities.
Despite its flaws, the film centers around Palestinian rap, which is certain to win audiences over, not to mention the soundtrack featuring beautifully sung Arab folk songs along with Nafar’s countering dynamic mix of Arabic, Hebrew and English.
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