Israel’s official entry for the best foreign language category at the Oscars is a drama in which the dialogue – for the first time – is exclusively in Arabic. Sand Storm, a gritty film dealing with the lives of Bedouin women in an impoverished and conservative southern village, is the directorial debut of Elite Zexer, a Jewish-Israeli, and was automatically selected as the Oscar entry after winning the award for best film in Israel’s film and television awards, the Ophirs. The prize was given during a tempestuous ceremony last week in which the film’s two leading women, both Israeli-Arabs, refused to join Israel’s culture minister, Miri Regev, on stage. One issue was Zexer’s difficulty in finding Bedouin actors, eventually recruiting Israeli-Arab actors who learned the Bedouin dialect for the film. Israel’s rightwing culture minister Miri Regev walked out briefly after a rapper included lines from the Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish during his performance.

Source: The Guardian September 26, 2016 15:56 UTC