In 2014, Atamna-Ismaeel was the first Arab Israeli to win MasterChef Israel. In the film, she says the win gave her “some sort of power to use food in order to build bridges between Jews and Arabs.”
She explains that the intention behind the festival was to put conflict to one side and build relations by pairing up Jewish and Arab chefs to bring back extinct dishes from the Arabic cuisine. “I believe there is no room for politics in the kitchen,” she says to camera.
The film will leave you craving a falafel feast. From the opening close-up shot of smooth, creamy hummus being slowly ground with a pestle and mortar, through the series of beautifully shot local specialities to the luscious-looking edible map of the region styled out of laffa (bread), hummus and sumac that is rolled up into one huge falafel sandwich at the end, the film is simply delicious.
Hawk left a legal job at Walt Disney to produce her own films. “I heard Nof on the radio in LA when she had just won MasterChef,” she tells me. “I made contact with her via Facebook and we started chatting. When she mentioned the festival, I knew I had to tell the story.”
That was in 2017 and only a few weeks before the festival was due to take place, so Hawk had to act fast to pull together funding. “We filmed on a shoestring budget, with just one crew.”
The film follows some of the chef partnerships, starting with Shlomi Meir (pictured - left - above) who, with father Reuven, runs Ashkenazi restaurant Maayan Habira, in Haifa.
The restaurant, founded in 1962 by Shlomi’s Holocaust survivor grandfather, specialises in smoked meat. Gentle giant Shlomi is paired with Ali Khattib (pictured - right - above) head chef of a restaurant in Ghaja, a small town in northern Israel, split in two by the border with Lebanon.
Ali’s Instagram-worthy food has its roots in Syria. He tells us he’s passionate about keeping alive the ancient recipes of his ancestors. He’s as proud of being Israeli as he is of his cuisine, which he dreams of popularising among Israeli chefs.
The chef duos all are provided with a list of dishes from the region that are considered extinct or have cultural importance. They may choose one to work on together. Ali and Shlomi are allocated kishek, a Syrian recipe using bulghur wheat and dried yoghurt that was traditionally made to preserve yoghurt over the winter. Ali is the only one of the 70 festival chefs who can make it, as it’s a disappearing tradition.
Atamna-Ismaeel explains that, even though it is made in Syria, a couple of hours away, she can buy it only when she visits Belgium: “Why? Because of politics!”
We also meet Osama Dalad, a young Palestinian chef from Akko, paired with long-haired Ilan Ferron,who has a Catholic father and Jewish Italian mother and runs the Talpiot restaurant at Talpiot Market.
They create an octopus maqluba — baked dish of rice, potatoes, vegetables and chickpeas that literally means “upside down”, describing how it is served tipped out of the pot on to a platter.
Tomer Abergel of restaurant Quando Pasha is paired with Salah Cordi, who says of his childhood in Jaffa: “In our neighbourhood, we spoke in Arabic. We laughed in Hebrew. We cursed in Romanian. We got upset in Moroccan. And it was all sababa (OK)!” Salah and Tomer reinvent qatayer — traditionally sweet pastries — by making savoury versions.
We meet a series of chefs and restaurateurs, including married couple Shoshi and Fadi Karaman — a Jewish/Arab couple with grown-up children and a hummus restaurant — Hummus Fadi. They are paired with star chef Chaim Tibi as part of the festival’s 'Hummus Project'.
Hummus, falafel and Israeli/Arabic salad all make a appearances as dishes over which the nations fight for ownership.
It would be naïve to think a food festival could calm the hotbed that is the region, but Atamna-Ismaeel is hopeful: “I’m going to use food to change a few people and if everyone does that then maybe we can make a large change.”
Breaking Bread is not the only film that features food and conflict. The short film Moshe and Amira focuses on twenty-something, Jewish/Muslim couple Moshe and Amira. It opens with them awkwardly anticipating a dinner party.
Amira and her parents have been invited to dine with Moshe’s parents. As the doorbell rings, Moshe screams at his father to remove off his apron emblazoned with “100 per cent kosher”, having berated his mother for cooking with kosher and not halal chicken.
Despite the potential hiccups, the meal is not the disaster the pair had imagined. The two sets of parents bond over food, finding familiarity in their culinary history. With their parents getting on like a house on fire, the love birds slip out for a romantic walk that takes the evening in quite a different direction.
There’s also quite a different dining experience for Alex and girlfriend, Amy in short film, Gentle. Gina Bellman plays Alex’s mother, who lives up to an extreme Jewish mother stereotype.
Opening shots of live chickens, transitioning to chicken portions, finally shown in bubbling chicken soup, hint at the carnage to come when the young couple join Alex’s parents, Carol and David for Friday-night dinner.
Hunker down and feast on film this November.
Programme details for the 2020 UK Jewish Film Festival can be found at ukjewishfilm.org, where you can buy a festival pass for just £35, giving access to all the films, screenings and galas without having to book a ticket for individual films and screenings. One pass covers a single household, so you and your partner, family or housemates can enjoy the whole festival together
