“Samexistence does not occur between the oppressor and the oppressed. It happens between two equal, “says political activist and comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi in his single -woman show” Coexistence, My Ass! “, Which gives its name to Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares’ biographical documentary. Shred over the tumultuous five years between 2019 and 2024,” Samexistence, my ass! “Traces activist-friend-comedian Eliassi’s rise in the comedy world as it Parallel the increase in tensions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories Due to residence violence and the election of right -wing politicians to the Israeli government.
Throughout filmEliassi in front of her single-woman show for an audience in a small Black Box theater. Unlike her early punchline-driven stand-up, the show takes a more long-shaped story form, a la “Hannah Gadsby: Nanette” or Jerrod Carmichael’s “Rothaniel.” Pares and her editor Rabab Haj Yahya add context to their stories by crossing her live performance of the show to new pictures that they filmed by Elassi with her family and friends in Israel, as well as archive films from Eliassi’s childhood, her viral satirical videos under quarantine and quarantine and Performances she made as a political correspondent on Israeli television.
Floating in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Small Farsi, Elassi was bred by an Iranian-Jewish mother and Romanian-Jewish father, whom she calls the “progressive left”, in peace’s oasis (Neve Shalom/Wahatal-Salam), a planned society of Israeli And Palestinians whose goal was to prove coexistence could be achieved. The community’s hippie-topical ideals are sent high and clearly by the rainbow-colored arch with a rainbow-colored pigeon that is at the top that welcomes visitors to its grounds. As a child, Eliassi and her Palestinian best friend Ranin met Hillary Clinton and Jane Fonda. As a teenager, Elassi went on a tour around Israel and talked about peace. After participating in Brandeis on a full Ride scholarship for her activism, she took a job at the UN.
Described by her mother as a fun, yet deeply serious child, Elassi was soon drawn to the world by stand-up comedy and asked that she chose to pursue comedy as a way to promote her political career after seeing Volodymyr zelenskyy pivot from Sitcoms to be the elected president in Ukraine. After becoming the first Jewish artist at the Palestine Comedy Festival, she was invited by Harvard to work with a peace project. She chose to develop her single-woman show, “coexistence, my ass!” During this process, Fares began filming Eliassi, both on Harvard -Campus and followed her on a comedy tour of the United States, which was stopped during the early days of Pandemin. Back in Israel, Eliassi recovers from Covid-19 at a luxury hotel called Hotel Corona, where infectious Palestinian and Israelis “radically” came along.
Over the next few years, Eliassi’s set was developed from topics as her body hair to more politically charged comedy, inspired by anger that she feels to look at new stories like The Murder of Eyad al-HallaqThe autistic Palestinian who was managed by the Israeli police on the way to the school in eastern Jerusalem, the increase in the settlement violence and forced expulsions masked as drafts on West Bank several standing criminal prosecutions.
As her profile rises, she begins to see the broader political gap online; She is either a traitor or a hero. Nothing in between. During protests after Netanyhus disputed elections, Eliassi meets many Israelis who are worried that fascism threatens their democracy, but very few who agree that the occupation of Palestine is part of the same issue. An elderly man counts violently NOAM over his views and calls her a provocateur. Not one to back down, she keeps the ground when she answers, “democracy and equality is not provocation.”
The last coda of the film takes a gloomy turn. After spending the last five years warding on questions about her single, Eliassi finally takes a man home to meet her parents – on October 6, 2023. The next day everything will shift. Elassi describes all the people she knows who have been influenced by the events, both Israeli and Palestinian. Arming texts fill the screen as she watches videos from the event online. “I don’t know how we get out of this,” she says. Later, after the bombing of Gaza begins, she gives a fiery speech, which makes it clear in her opinion that the country’s “racist, fascist government” exploited everyone’s collective grief to escalate the situation into a total annihilation of Gaza.
Here, the documentary moves in addition to Eliassi’s views on the subject. Not sure how to move forward in the name of peace, she talks to others in her community, including the son of an Israeli peace activist who died on October 7. She asks him if his mother would regret his work. He replies that “she did not work for peace so that when they arrive they will spare her. She worked so that there would be no reason for them to come. “He adds that her death proves that she was right, and that” if we do not want to experience the tragedies of the war, we must end warfare. “
Eliassi also checks in with her family and discovers that her happy aunt Zipi, who liked to make jokes about Palestinians before, now says she doesn’t want peace or “something to do with them. “Her mother shares a story about a friend who told her,” I can’t find empathy within me for the kids killed in Gaza. ” In an earlier scene, Eliassi and Ranin were worried that they felt the whole country lost their grip on humanity. Now Elassi, along with everyone else she is talking to, can see exactly what this numbness against Palestinian life has done.
There is an abundance of materials from Eliassi’s life during these counterfeit years, and prices, Yahya, and co-author Rachel Leah Jones are struggling to balance these striking images with it in her single-woman show. The show, which personally builds against its devastating code, does not really have room to float as it would do if you saw it live. The transverse editing diverts the show’s rising tension as it swings from political theme medium to Eliassi’s devastating serious final monologue.
There are really two documentaries here, each made with a different strategy. And even though they are both hurting mergers of the personal with the political, the attempt will blend them together not fully work, they both undermine the speed. But “coexistence, my ass!”, Remains a compelling front line to a country on the brink of implosion, with Eliassi’s humor and insights that act as a melancholy elegance for a peace that, at least until real change soon, may not, may not ever come.
Rating: B.
“Coexistence, my ass!” Premiere at 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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