A dynamic Palestinian family drama tells the story of Arab and Jewish life in Israel

Set in Israel, Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti's Happy Holidays is a haunting, realistic family drama whose turning points reveal deep cultural and political dimensions around gender and ethnicity. Like his Oscar-nominated crime drama Ajami (which he co-directed with Yaron Shani), Copti's second feature follows an ensemble cast of characters – both Arab and Jewish – and paints a multifaceted portrait of life in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city.

Happy Holidays depicts strained family ties and difficult romantic relationships, oscillating between fear and joy. Copti and cinematographer Tim Kuhn film each interaction with a handheld intimacy that not only enhances the subtle, powerful performances of the cast (many of whom are there for the first time) but welcomes the viewer into each scene as if it were a complicated family reunion. The sprawling plot centers on four members of an Arab family who share several casual, comfortable scenes together, but whose secrets from each other testify to a larger culture of silence, shame, social pressure and rampant prejudice.

More from Variety

The film begins on the Jewish holiday of Purim, when the family is brought together by a car accident in which their adult daughter Frida, or “Fifi” (Manar Shehab), suffers only minor injuries. Although the story is hardly a matter of life and death, the lives and futures of the characters gradually come into sharp and unflinching focus in their own sections.

The first chapter focuses on Fifi's middle-aged brother Rami (Toufic Danial). It begins when he learns that his pregnant Jewish girlfriend Shirley (Shani Dahari) has changed her mind about the abortion they had both agreed to, leading to an argument. For Shirley – who later becomes the focus of a separate chapter – this pregnancy means she must face family pressure over the baby's half-Arab ethnicity, particularly from her sister Miri (Merav Mamorsky), whose otherwise pleasant demeanor forms a disturbing contrast to her sharp spitefulness toward Rami.

For Rami, the consequences of this story become increasingly dire, escalating to false accusations and racially motivated attacks. But Copti isn't content to simply label Rami a victim defined by a single facet of his life. Danial's portrayal of him as a man who seems easily unhinged, whose anger is tied to both casual misogyny and childish emotional baggage, is commendably sour. We don't just feel sorry for him, we understand him through and through.

Each family member's story weaves into the next. While keeping both Shirley's pregnancy and the recent attacks on him a secret, Rami tries to help his father, Fouad (Imad Hourani), deal with a financial debt that in turn puts pressure on his mother, Hanan (Wafaa Aoun), the protagonist of a complex mother story in which she is both noble savior and overbearing abuser — and everything in between, thanks to the vivid nuances of Aoun's portrayal. Hanan wants to make sure her older daughter, Leila's (Sophie Awaad), wedding goes off without a hitch, and in turn pressures Fifi to file a health insurance claim after the accident, creating another complication related to the concept of medical privacy within families.

Fifi's story is perhaps the most fascinating, as the pieces of it slowly come to light over the course of the film. She wants to keep her medical history a secret, claiming her records were switched with someone else's to prevent – or at least delay – her mother from learning more about her personal life in college. While clearing up this obvious swirl, Fifi also begins dating Rami's respected doctor friend Walid, and when the two enter into an exciting but uncertain relationship, it nonetheless becomes a cause for celebration within the family, as it could potentially have some significance. However, Walid's conservative expectations of Fifi also begin to cause tension.

Happy Holidays is not so much based on misunderstandings as it is on differing societal definitions between the genders and generations of Arab men and women. Yet the film's larger cultural backdrop also vacillates between this patriarchal image and that of the others. The subtle racism the Arab characters face is, unfortunately, a daily part of their lives. Although Copti does not directly confront the militaristic structures that contribute to these tensions, the Israeli military is an ever-present bogeyman, especially in scenes surrounding education.

Fifi, for example, teaches in kindergarten, where children are raised to revere Israel's soldiers, and where she must pass through a security checkpoint where those in uniform are simply waved through. Miri, a staunch nationalist, must deal with her high school-aged daughter's depression over her impending military service. Another generational conflict also shows itself in the form of teenage classmates whose concerns about the occupation are dismissed by guest speakers in IDF uniforms. This section, while brief, comes across as a biting coming-of-age drama in which parents just don't get it, except that the central mother-daughter conflict is that they are contributing to the war.

In Happy Holidays, silence speaks louder than a thousand words, from the tensions between family members to the unspoken to the quiet acceptance in the face of social norms about what they should accept as Arabs in Israel. At the same time, Copti creates a vivid sense of the characters (and of interpersonal dynamics) by letting scenes play out with long, overlapping dialogue that feel increasingly charged thanks to her naturalistic approach. It's a film about acting, and in more ways than one. Not only is every single actor a delight, but they all play characters forced to play a specific role in society. The drama here comes from pushing against these unspoken boundaries.

The best of diversity

Subscribe to Variety's newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.