One of the main characters in Israeli filmmaker Danny Vereté’s documentary-like first feature, YELLOW ASPHALT, is the cruel Negev desert landscape. The film is a triptych examining collisions between Bedouin tribes and their Israeli neighbors. In BLACK SPOT, an oil tanker speeding down a desert highway hits a Bedouin child. When the drivers (Zevik Raz and Moshe Ivgi) frantically try to hide the dead boy, they are discovered. A standoff ensues between the unapologetic Israelis and the threatening Bedouin tribesman, while the child’s mother wails in a heap of black burqua on the sand. In HERE IS NOT THERE, tribal elders refuse to let Tamam (Tatjana Blacher), a German woman with blue, made-up eyes behind a veil, leave her Bedouin husband, so she steals away in the night. Tamam recalls happier times while desperately dragging her crying daughters through the desert, and her vengeful husband hunts them down. Finally, in RED ROOFS, when the affair between a married Israeli farmer, Shmuel (Motti Katz), and his Bedouin maid, Suhilla (Raida Adon), is discovered by the tribe, death and dishonor touch all involved. Vereté’s film is an unflinching portrait of oppression and the precarious intermingling of ancient customs and the modern world.
