Early last evening I spoke with Bethlehem director Yuval Adler and Ali Waked, the Palestinian journalist with whom Adler co-wrote the screenplay. I wrote a few days ago that Bethlehem, Israel’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, is “a lucid, tightly wound thriller that regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a filter of double-agenting and family matters and betrayal and anxiety,” and that the Academy’s foreign language committee “would be foolish not to pay heed.”
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(l.) Bethlehem director Yuval Adler, (r.) co-screenwriter Ali Waked at Hollywood Roosevelt hotel — Friday, 11.8, 5:55 pm.
Adler and Waked are in Los Angeles for screenings of Bethlehem at AFI Fest. We kicked it around for 40 minutes in the lower lobby of the Roosevelt hotel. This was just before the David O. Russell event upstairs.