Iris Zaki
Asian Premiere
In this charming film, the director sets up shop in an Arab hair salon in her hometown of Haifa, to try to understand her Arab neighbors. As she washes their hair, she converses candidly with the salon¡¯s clients - Arabs and Jews - on topics ranging from politics to love. What emerges from these conversations is an honest and nuanced portrayal of contemporary Israel.
In 1948, the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine ended and Allan Cunningham, who was the last High Commissioner of Palestine, left Haifa, Israel and returned to Britain. Soon, Israel was founded there, and since then, there have been wars and conflicts between Jews and Arabs. In Haifa with such historical backgrounds, if Arabs and Jews meet, what would they talk about? The hair salon of Pipi, a Arab Christian welcomes both Arabs and Israeli as her clients. Every client tells a story about her personal life while they get their hair washed in sink. Such a short time of washing hair is devoted to a talk about anything – ethnicity, religion and the history of the war that ethnicity and religion brought about. In a certain conflict situation, what we need might be a candid talk, neither a logical account nor statistics to convince each other. The clients of the salon are all different in ethnic, culture backgrounds, education and religion, but they embrace and tolerate each other as they are. While listening to their talk, I find myself in a state of tranquility with my messed up brain cleared. [Moon Ii-joo]
Iris Zaki
My Kosher Shifts (2010)
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