Cast and Creative Team on "The Bubble"

The Bubble deals with suicide bombers, the chic side of Tel Aviv and an Arab-Israeli romance

A romance doesn't get much more explosive than the one depicted in The Bubble, director Eytan Fox's (Walk on Water, Yossi & Jagger) new film about a gay affair between an Israeli and a Palestinian in modern day Tel Aviv. The star of 2002's Yossi and Jagger, hunky actor Ohad Knoller plays Noam, a gay Israeli who works in an indie CD shop on super-hip Sheikin Street. He and roommates Lulu (Daniela Wircer) and Yali (Alon Friedmann) all juggle complicated love lives - especially when visiting Palestinian Ashram (Israeli-Arab actor Yousef "Joe" Sweid) shows up at their door. Having first caught a glimpse of each other at a military checkpoint, Noam and Ashram now have the opportunity to begin an affair, albeit a challenging one due to the political climate and its dangers. Ashram illegally stays in Tel Aviv, working in Yali's caf? under an Israeli identity, while his relatives back home in Nablus become involved with Hamas and its dangerous actions and suicide bombings - which could eventually catch up with Ashram and his boyfriend.

Co-written by Fox and his partner in life and art, Gal Uchovsky (a music critic for Time Out Tel Aviv magazine), The Bubble has already seen its own share of political troubles and tensions. Some international film festivals refused to program or exhibit the film - or any Israeli film for that matter - in response/protest to the Israeli-Lebanese conflict of 2006. Yet politics aside, the film is quite romantic, funny and depicts a hip, chic side of Israel rarely seen in film or the media, complimented by an amazing soundtrack by the likes of Belle & Sebastian, Bright Eyes, Le Tigre and out Israeli pop star Ivri Lider. I had the chance to sit down with Fox, Knoller and Sweid - the latter of whom, it's worth noting, has since become a huge teen idol back in Israel thanks to his role on a popular soap opera - to discuss the film, suicide bombers and the bubble that is Tel Aviv.

Q: Does this happen a lot - Israelis who take up with Palestinian lovers and they have to lay low?
Yousef Sweid: Yeah. There was a hairdresser, I went to him a couple of times, and he talked to me in Hebrew. But when he realized I was Arabic he started talking to me in Arabic. I said, 'You're Arabic?' He told me his story - he's a Palestinian who ran away and he has a Jewish boyfriend in Israel and he's hiding his identity. Very similar to [Ashram] in the movie.
Eytan Fox: When I was a kid growing up in Jerusalem, I knew or heard of all these things going on in Independence Park. That was the meeting place [for Jewish gays and Arabs]. The Arabs were coming from the eastern part of Jerusalem. But then when the Fatah started and all the problems of the last few years it stopped. So we have very few interactions between Israelis and Jews. On different levels - not only sexual. It's terrible. You live with these people! The fact you don't learn Arabic in school, that's a problem because how can we talk to these people if we don't know Arabic?

Q: Did you and Gal chat with any gay Arabs/Palestinians while writing the film?
Fox: We actually did talk to some. There's a couple, in Jerusalem, an Israeli guy and his Arab lover. We talked to Yousef a lot, who is straight, but is Arab with connections to Palestinians. We did a lot of research to understand what we were feeling about these issues.

Q: You certainly put forth an image of a contemporary image of Israel we haven't seen too often.
Fox: At the film festivals and gay film festivals they said, 'We didn't know Tel Aviv looked this way. We thought of it as this exotic, camels, desert, whatever.' And I felt good. It's good for people all over the world to realize life in Israel is very diverse. Lots of different communities and lifestyles, and in The Bubble we're taking it a step forward. We love Tel Aviv, Gal and I and our friends. That love I wanted to come through and be part of the film.

Q: How familiar were you with the hipster area of Tel Aviv depicted in The Bubble?
Ohad Knoller: Very familiar. I'm living 30 years in Tel Aviv, since I was born. Ten years ago I lived in an apartment like the one on the film, with a gay roommate and a girl. Just like the film.

Q: Did you also grow up in Israel?
Sweid: Yeah, I grew up in Haifa, which is a very nice city and very different because a lot of Arabs and Jews coexist there peacefully.

Q: How accurate of a reflection is the film of actual Tel Aviv life?
Knoller: It's like Sex and the City. That's not really New York, but the highlights combined in a metaphor. It's the same with Tel Aviv [in The Bubble] - it's not pretending to be the real Tel Aviv but a metaphor for a place where people can be together like nothing is going on outside.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
Fox: Many different challenges. Will I be able to pull this through, the whole business of an Arab-Israeli relationship, a gay relationship. Suicide bombers. The combination of the city of Tel Aviv, which is such a happening, nice place, and these circumstances of war and occupation. That's the way we live. On the one hand cafes, movies, and theater. And war, army occupation, and bombs going off.

Q: Some scenes take place in the Palestinian city of Nablus, but you actually shot them in an Arab village within Israel?
Fox: Yeah. There was no way in the world to actually get in [Palestinian territory because of] the insurance, and some of the crew members were afraid, saying we're not going to do this.

Q: Why take on such a project wrought with so many production, and potentially post-production, challenges?
Fox: It was important to me, after my mother's death, that we do this film in her name. She was a member of the Jewish Women's Municipality. She was a sophisticated, elegant woman from Manhattan moving to Jerusalem in the 1960s, which was really Schtetl. She got used to it and became more Israeli than Israelis. She became very involved in the business of Israelis and Arabs [coming together], and we had Palestinian friends over for Friday night dinner and we showed them our customs and things. She influenced me and I wanted to deal with that head on. She died while I was shooting Walk on Water in Berlin [a few years ago]. And my father died a week after we opened The Bubble. I became an orphan after making these two movies. It's a bit tough but he got a chance to see The Bubble at the premiere. He was a tough half-Israeli, a control freak, and he cried and hugged me and talked about the film and its meaning. I said, 'Okay, I've done by thing, I don't need anything else now!'

Q: Yousef, you're a teen idol back home thanks to a role on the soap opera, Ha'Alufa. Quite a first for the Israeli culture, isn't it?
Sweid: Well, you can say that. When I was a teenager there were three Arab actors I liked very much that were known and doing films all over the world. Not exactly teen idols - they did very serious things. And now I'm doing this soap opera in which I'm playing a Muslim Arab falling in love with a Jewish girl and with young people seeing it, like 11- and 12-years-old, I walk the street and people come up to me and say they love me and the character and want him to be with this Jewish girl. It's this new thing for young people, the Jewish in Israel. They get a lot of ideas from the media, parents and school, that Arabs are bad people and bombers and terrorists. And suddenly they get this different idea, a nice person who's a soccer player and they fell in love with him.
Fox: Girls are crazy about him. When I was a kid the idea you could like or admire an Arab was unheard of! And this soap opera, it's pop culture and girls all over the country know he's Arab and love him.

Q: That said, did you think twice about taking this role?
Sweid: Yes. Two issues - the gay and political. With the gay issue I was a bit afraid because of my Arab friends and my mother is very Christian religious. For her, gay is a sin. But I told her I'm an actor and I believe in this film and want to do it. She said okay. I was surprised. The second issue was the political issue. Eytan is a wonderful director, because two years before the movie he worked on the script and we had a lot of meetings and he asked me what do I think of the story. For me it was important that I would agree with what goes on with it and this character. If I did another movie that has nothing to do with Arabs and all this, I wouldn't care so much. But as an Arab in a Jewish country it's most important that the idea in this movie would be okay for the Arabs.

Q: Yet there are Arab suicide bombers in the film, including at least one we find sympathetic as a character. Was there any fear of perpetuating the perception of all Arabs as potential suicide bombers?
Sweid: Yes. The thing is I read some other script, and there was a sentence where an Arab says, 'Israeli military has airplanes and tanks and air bombs, and we don't - our bombs are us. We are our bombs.' In Palestine this is their army. They saw this weapon makes them powerful so they say we will fight with this weapon. But I don't know if every Palestinian can be a bomber. I don't think so. I know most people want peace.
Fox: Well of course that was part of the questions we asked ourselves. And I was trying, and it's very extreme, to create a sympathy for suicide bombers. And I know a lot of these [bombers] could be great people, could be our friends and their life and condition deteriorates and they reach places where ... I don't know what you and I would do in those life circumstances. They're so terrible.
Sweid: The thing is people should not look at these people as crazy. I heard a true story about a Palestinian girl and her father didn't want her to marry the man she loved. Not a Jewish guy! And she didn't know Jewish or Israelis and she's not political, but she went and tried to bomb herself. She was confused and angry and this was her way to show ... to commit suicide. Not to kill the enemy. You have a lot of different stories and have to get inside there to understand why these people do these things. But it's the wrong way to say or [interpret that] every Palestinian is like this.