Film: Would you have sex with an Arab?

Without doubt one of the most shocking film documentaries of the year, if only for its title, this French-Israeli coproduction takes a frank loo kat the friction between Israeli Arabs (who number one and a half million) and Israeli Jews from a sexual point of view. Shot with a hand held camera in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the work seeks to highlight the relationship between politics and love in a small country where the differences between the two peoples are at once vast and minute. Yolande Zauberman, who directed the documentary, prowls the night streets and clubs of the country's two biggest cities and bluntly asks folk whether they would engage in sexual relations with a member of the other community.

As one would expect there are mixed reactions on both sides with some seeing no problem with sleeping with someone from a people perceived to be the enemy, while others are quite categorical in their refusal to have a physical relationship with someone from the 'other side'. Interestingly enough, you can very well imagine some of the younger interviewees, who seem adamant that they would not sleep with either an Israeli Jew or an Arab, changing their minds in the future, while one young female party-goer takes the question to heart and starts to analyse her initial reaction and comes to the conclusion that she is a hypocrite.

Those older participants by contrast, and quite logically, also seem to be sure of their answers, but in their cases you can tell that they have probably already asked themselves the same question and have been through the process of justifying their answers. One of those questioned in the film is actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was killed in 2011 in Jenin. He had a Jewish mother and an Arab father and his insight into the question was perhaps the most interesting of all.

It's not all serious though. Some of the reactions to having been asked the question so bluntly and without irony are hilarious and some can't even bring themselves to answer. These moments bring some relief from the otherwise intense dialogue and prove that one can laugh about such issues.

Although the majority of the film is in English, there are parts which are difficult to follow due to the level of language of the participants, but we'll forgive them for this as firstly it's not their first language, but probably more importantly, they would never have expected to have been asked such a difficult question while out partying!

Would you have sex with an Arab? is a film that one should definitely see in order to understand in a broader context the conflict in this part of the world. Hopefully it will start a debate on relations between the two peoples and show that it doesn't have to all be so serious after all.

Would you have sex with an Arab? will be out on DVD soon.