Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Ajami is a bold crime drama set on the margins of an Arab ghetto. Working with a cast of non-actors in the real streets of Ajami itself, the film deftly meshes characters and conflicts with unsentimental compassion, uncompromising realism, and harrowing violence.

Meir Cohen is a decorated police officer who barely earns a living. His new assignment of deporting African migrant workers from Israel "of their own free will," teaches him foreigners aren't the only ones who have no future in his country. Filmmaker Noam Kaplan also delicately sketches the portraits of an Israeli-Filipino boy fighting for recognition, a taxi driver whose children are migrating to a distant country, and a veteran migrant worker who's...

[A] dramatic comedy about failed loves and the friendships that survive them. It's Cinderella in reverse, with two grungy friends--Shabtai and Israel--seeking their 'princess' and a beat-up table standing in for Cinderella's famed glass slipper.--Container.