Arabic Movie

It was a tradition of 1970s Friday afternoons in Israel: tuning in to the only television channel and watching the Arab movie of the week. It was a national pastime, and a strange one at that: how did Israel’s official TV station obtain these films? Why did it insist on regularly showing films made by “the enemy”? And why were Israelis so interested in Arabic cinema?

This documentary looks into one of the most unlikely moments in Israel’s history, and examines not just how but why the country shared cultural heroes with those they were often at war with. A nostalgic examination of a time gone by, and one that raises some challenging questions.