A Borrowed Identity

According to a statistic that opens Eran Riklis's coming-of-age film, “20 percent of Israel's citizens are Arab.” Based on Sayed Kashua's semi-autobiographical 2002 novel Dancing Arabs, the story here centers on Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom), a sensitive young man struggling with his identity as an ethnic minority in the 1980s and 1990s. Everyone in Tira considers Eyad a genius, but his future is unclear. When his father, Salah (Ali Suliman), isn't picking fruit, he's fighting for Palestinian liberation. Eyad's moving to Jerusalem to attend boarding school fulfills a dream for Salah, but Eyad is now more of a minority than ever: struggling to speak Hebrew, studying the Bible, and eating Western food. As part of a volunteer program, Eyad also provides companionship to Jonathan (Michael Moshonov), a punk kid with muscular dystrophy, whose sarcasm sharply contrasts with Eyad's polite reserve. Jonathan and his mother, Edna (Yaël Abecassis), become a second family for Eyad. By the 1990s, Eyad has a girlfriend (Daniel Kitzis), but keeps the relationship secret since his ethnicity continues to attract unwanted attention. On the surface, A Borrowed Identity is not a political film, but it is guardedly optimistic, pinning its hopes for the future on nonviolent assimilationists like Eyad. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)