Jerusalem Film Festival's View

Co-producers: Gill Holland, Isen Robbins, Aimee Schoof

USA/Kurdistan-Iraq, 2006

Newroz Films, New York

Composers:         Richard Horowitz
                          John Lissauer



English (some Kurdish, Hebrew, Arabic.)
109 min

David is a New York TV producer, a nice Jewish boy with a demanding mother and a Jewish American Princess for a fiancée. In a chance meeting he lays his eyes on Layla, and before you even get a chance to marvel at her charms, the two are already in love. Layla is a Kurdish refugee up for deportation, and if that’s not enough, the two families aren’t too excited about sharing their DNA. Now the two young people must decide whether to listen to their hearts or to let the constraints of family and politics run their lives.

The events of the last years have sharpened the gaps in our multi-cultural world, coloring the differences in virtually irreconcilable tones. Jay Jonroy, who comes from a Kurdish family that fled Iraq during Saddam’s regime, approaches this heavy socio-political topic with just the proper amount of playfulness. He places the cultural and political dilemmas into the formula of a romantic comedy and from the first shot approaches the prejudices of each of the clans with a smile. To this positive energy you can add the charming performance of the actors in the main role, the fast-paced plot and the way in which the soundtrack of Kurdish, Klezmer and Jazz music fuses perfectly between East and West.