Atash [DVD] [2005]

There are times when you watch a film from a debut director, not knowing what to expect, and are blown away by the raw talent that they display. This was certainly my experience after having watched Atash (Arabic for Thirst.) It is a seriously good film. The birth story of the film is a complex one, beset by loads of production problems, political difficulties (it is the first film ever to be directed by an Arab and produced by an Israeli), and casting issues (the majority of the cast is from a local village and are untrained actors.) Yet, what emerges is a distinctly powerful piece of cinema.

One would expect a film made by an Isralei and Arab to be about the conflict, but refreshingly this film isn't. It is much more focused on Palestinian patriarchal society, and the reality of community disapproval in the rural Arab village.

The fact that the story is not dominated by the conflict allows it to broach other important issues in the middle east, like water scarecity. Much of the film is about the importance of water, and humans' need to have protected sources to secure their livelihoods and families. All very interesting and important stuff.

I would strongly recommend this film to everybody. It is important for all of us to see such an interesting talent emerge who is willing to take risks to make himself heard.

Atash (Thirst) , an extraordinary accomplished first film by the Arab-Israeli director Tawfik Abu Wael(2004), is set in the arid wasteland of the Palestinian desert, where an Old Testament father(Hussain Yassin Mahajne) and his family(wife,2 daughters and son)eke out a living from making charcoal.To do this the family have to saw down ,chop up trees from prohibited woods and burn the logs in pyres. The family have a scandal in their past whereby one daughter was molested or raped,so they have to live some miles from the nearest Palestinian village, due to the patriarchal values that dominate.The father rules the roost and is mean and begrudging of his children's needs, watching them with a hawk's eye. The mother and children have to help him with the charcoal burning,the fetching of water(heavy work) and the growing of plants for food. He deprives his son of his schooling and makes him workfor him,kicking over a water cistern when he escapes to school one day.The shamed daughter is maltreated and kept locked up whenever possible.She is deprived of luxuries like good clothes. He hoards his money but instead of spending it on the children he uses a lot to lay a pipe-line up into the hills so they can have running water. However due to the pipe being attacked and bursting one day they have to take turns lodging in a makeshift lean-to in the hills with a fire to guard against marauders. The son is often bullied by other boys on the way home from school and the donkey has graffiti scribbled on its sides due to the family's shame.Convincingly performed by a non-professional cast and shot with stark beautyby Asaf Sudry, especially the elemental scenes of fire,it's a claustrophobic tale of family tensions,with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict looming darkly.

This film has subtitles and is a story about a family who appear to be living a sort of exiled life outside of a village in a property that doesn't belong to them. They live in fear of being discovered living there, but have nowhere else to go. It is a film about oppression and abuse of women and family by men, but also shows what can happen when the rest of the family cannot tolerate the situation. It is an interesting film of a glimpse of the kind of life people in the west could not tolerate, and worth watching. I would give this film a 6 out of 10.

This is one of those Palestinian films, like Elia Suleiman's, that's quite art-house-y. Although it takes some time to get going, it moves along very quietly and beautifully conveys the bleakness of life in the few empty parts of Palestine.

DVD received faulty and did not work in any players. Very expensive for this. I did not know how to return it.

We were looking forward to watching this DVD based on the various reviews.

Unfortunately, the DVD bought from Amazon, would not play in our DVD player- we live in South Africa and are able to watch Region 2 DVDs. The DVD player gave different messages, either 'disc error' or 'no disc'.

We then tried to play the DVD on the desk top computer, which can play DVDs regardless of region encoding and again we received the error messages. Clearly something is wrong with the copy of the DVD we received as it would not play in two separate devices.

By the time we came to try and watch the DVD the 30 day return period had just passed and we are now stuck with a dud DVD.