Review of "Tel Aviv on Fire"

A Palestinian-Israeli comedy about the occupation. Salam is a production assistant on the popular Palestinian soap "Tel Aviv on Fire", which features a Palestinian woman spy disguised as an Israeli, seeking to become romantically involved with the general so that she can obtain the secret plans for the Six Day War. Oh, and she's played by a visiting French actor. Salam is ostensibly there because he speaks good Hebrew and can advise her and others on the dialogue, but really he's there because his uncle is somehow senior in the production team.

But Salam keeps getting hauled in at the checkpoint between Ramallah where he works and Jerusalem where he lives, and the Israeli officer in charge wants to know about the show, because his wife watches it. In fact everyone watches it - Israelis, the staff and patients at the hospital where Salam's would-be girlfriend works...Salam lies that he is the writer, and then the officer (who is a bit of a thuggish buffoon, but also a bit comic rather than really nasty) wants to change the script. Then somehow Salam becomes the writer, and...

Well, you get the idea. It's a comedy about soaps, and TV production, but also about the occupation, and the unequal relations between Israelis and Palestinians. And it's both quite funny and quite poignant, and worth watching.

One from Netflix.