Concerned Citizen

We are delighted to partner with the UK Jewish Film Festival 2022, taking place this autumn in cinemas across the UK.

Idan Haguel’s smart satire finds an aspirational gay couple in Tel Aviv discovering that equality doesn’t apply to everyone.

Ben (Shlomi Bertonov) and Raz (Ariel Wolf) live in a multicultural neighbourhood in the Israeli metropolis. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but they can see potential for gentrification. Besides, their apartment is great. They’re surrounded by friends and they live in a society that seems accepting of their sexuality. So much so that they’re considering having children of their own. But when Ben is irked by two black youths who are leaning on a young tree he planted outside their apartment block, his call to the police sets off a chain reaction that makes him question the kind of society they live in.

Haguel’s film is an engaging study in privilege. Seen entirely from the couple’s perspective, the action not only highlights the ease by which we can ignore injustice in the world around us, it questions the role we all play in transforming a city and how it is rarely ever for the benefit of everyone. Bertonov and Wolf balance their characters’ irritability with genuine concern for the repercussions of their actions, while Haguel suggests that Tel Aviv is just like every other gentrifying city in the world, where the gap between rich and poor, the haves and the dispossessed, is widening at an alarming rate.

Watch more films in the UK Jewish Film Festival 2022 collection.