As Israeli director Eran Riklis’s new drama, Dancing Arabs, has screened around the world, distributors have danced with trying to get the title right.
Dancing Arabs is the original title, from one of the two Sayed Kashua novels that inspired the film. In France, the title translates to My Son. My Heart Dances is its name in Germany. The United States currently has the film listed as A Borrowed Identity.
“I think [Dancing Arabs] is a great title,” Riklis tells The CJN on the day of the film’s premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, where it was the opening night pick. “I think distributors are afraid of the word ‘Arabs.’ They fear it will categorize the film as being political.”
Although his drama does contain political content, Riklis says he hopes audiences are open to hearing a story from one of the 1.6 million Arabs that live in Israel. Arabs comprise 20 per cent of Israel’s population, but Riklis says a lot of Israelis ignore their presence.
The “dancing” of the title is not literal, but a reference to how Arabs must learn to move and orient themselves as a minority population. The film opens in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on May 15.
Dancing Arabs tells the story of Eyad, played by newcomer Tawfeek Barhom. Eyad is a brainy kid who gets accepted into a top Israeli high school, only to realize he is the only Arab in his class. Although Eyad tries to fit in, he soon falls madly in love with a Jewish girl, which complicates his life.
The story of this cultural difference was not just inherent to Kashua, an Israeli-Arab journalist who wrote the source materials and the screenplay. Riklis says that Barhom, a relative newcomer to the screen, also identified with Eyad’s journey.
“He also went to boarding school… he had an affair with a Jewish girl,” Riklis says of his leading man. “I also needed an authentic Arab kid, but someone that you wouldn’t [automatically] associate as Arab. You feel [Barhom] could be anybody, and in that sense, he was perfect.”
Barhom actually lived in the village of Ein Rafa as a child – the same place where Riklis shot his 2004 film The Syrian Bride. As a pre-teen boy, Barhom would visit the set. Upon meeting Riklis for Dancing Arabs, Barhom told him that watching the filming of that production made him fall in love with cinema.
Dancing Arabs was supposed to have a splashy premiere at last summer’s Jerusalem Film Festival, says Riklis, who is one of Israel’s top directors after films like Lemon Tree and Zaytoun.
However, the conflict in Gaza muted the opening. The festival debut was scaled back and the film’s planned summer release date was delayed until November.
However, despite the specificity of the Israeli-Arab conflict within the film, Dancing Arabs has found acclaim in various foreign markets. It screened to strong reviews at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in April.
When discussing the film’s international appeal, Riklis talked about his arrival the previous day at the Toronto airport. He says he looked at a “Welcome to Canada” sign that featured young kids from different ethnic backgrounds.
“Once you look at a thing like that, you can see how these stories can be totally understood and accepted.”
One central theme of Dancing Arabs is the shortsightedness of education. In the film, the teachers in both classrooms – the Arab primary school he attends a boy and the prestigious Israeli high school – explore a selective history of Israel.
These two different perspectives suggest reluctance on educators’ parts to explain the other side of the story. Riklis says there are a lot of mistakes being done in both classrooms.
“Education is the basis for change for younger people,” he says. “If you don’t get the education right, no good can happen later on.”
Riklis is currently working on more films that take place in or are connected to Israel. He says that an upcoming project deals with the aftermath of the Six-Day War.
Although the director says he would not object to telling stories derived from other places, he wants to keep his focus on social and political life in Israel.
“It’s a little bit of a duty to expose these kinds of stories, because otherwise, they go unnoticed.”
