The members of an Egyptian police band, all neat in their powder blue uniforms, turn up to perform in an Arab cultural festival in Israel. Unfortunately they take the wrong bus from the airport and end up in tiny Bet Hatikva, home, they are assured, to "no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all". The people they meet in a bus stop café offer them hospitality. Communicating in English, some more successfully than others, Arab visitors and Israeli hosts dine, dance, share stories, laugh, confide, sigh and pass the night away.
The principal characters are the crusty old band leader, his handsome young nemesis, and the beautiful proprietor of the café who puts them both up. Other characters are deftly rendered in a few strokes and the narrative style is pleasurably pictorial, drawing out carefully framed group tableaux to lovely deadpan effect.
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There are films that attempt to broach the prickly topic of Arab/Israeli conflict, but few are quite so subtly bittersweet as The Band's Visit. This warm-hearted film gradually draws us in, gently treading a line between sorrow and happiness to reveal how people from opposing cultures face the same trials and tribulations.
Full review
The Band’s Visit has not provided any of the narrative payoffs we might have expected, but has provided something more valuable: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty.
Full review
Both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you.
Full review
The Band's Visit is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV and Academy On Demand and AroVision.
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