Fantasy and reality at Eurasia Film Festival: Israel and Lebanon on film

"The Band" is a visually symbolic, beautifully cast and edited vignette on the visit of an Egyptian band to the opening of an Arab culture center in Israel. The band, unescorted, set out to make the journey from Ben Gurion airport to their small town destination. In pale blue uniforms, with their instruments slung across their backs or pulled behind them, they struggle with the Israeli public bus service. They find themselves at a dusty, isolated road junction, with no onward bus, and not enough shekels. They hesitantly throw themselves at the mercy of the local café-owner, Dina, who, with her neighbors, offers to accommodate the band for the night until they can complete their journey. Gradually, as the band members reveal themselves to their Israeli hosts, they assume deep and varied characters. The Colonel, Tawfiq, in stilted conversation with Dina, reveals the suicide of his son and the death of his wife, the reasons for his melancholia and strict discipline.

Music is the means of revelation. Khaled, the handsome, young violinist, demonstrates his successful chat-up line -- "Do you like Chet Baker?" and hums "My Funny Valentine." At dinner with the neighbors, three musicians join their hosts in a rendering of "Summertime." The clarinetist plays the first few bars of his unfinished concerto, and finds the inspiration to finish the piece in a child's musical toy. Three other band members perform their beloved Arab music on the pavement.

Several brilliant pieces of farce illuminate the film. A lonely Israeli and a band member vie for use of the public call box. Tawfiq and Dina conduct the air in the local park. Khaled, in the roller-skating rink, shows his Israeli host how to flirt with his girl. The latter is an exquisitely timed and staged threesome, demonstrating the skills of the director, Eran Kolirin. The film finishes with the first notes of the band's concert, showing how the experience has completely changed the relationship between Tawfiq and his players, melding them into a team.

"Under the Bombs" is the visually gripping, symbolically detailed story of the search for a small boy in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006. Muslim Zeina, who has sent her young son, Karim, to live with her sister to spare him from the pain of her divorce, hires Christian taxi driver Tony to take her south to find her sister and son. The detached but horrifying scenes of falling bombs, wrecked buildings and displaced women and children form the background for the emotional pain of the search. After a fraught journey, delayed by wrecked bridges and military vehicles, they reach Zeina's family home. Only the front door remains. Her sister's body, which lay for days in the bombed rubble, has been buried in a communal grave.

But the neighbors' child, Ali, says that Karim has been taken by some French reporters. Gradually the story emerges. Ali's description -- of waiting for three days in a cellar, with Tarik, Kerim's best friend, choking on the dust, his mother's mad dash for his asthma inhaler -- is poignant in its understatement. Tarik and his mother have died, and Kerim, who went after him, was pulled from the rubble by the French. Zeina is torn between arranging burial for her sister and chasing unknown French reporters across the bombed-out countryside. She cries on the sidelines while the village buries her sister, then, with Tony, sets off again in search of her son. As the chase continues, Zeina pursues every contact and pulls every string her family connections give her. With each piece of good news, she becomes stronger, but more reliant on Tony and his contacts. As Tony turns from money-grabbing taxi-driver to sympathetic companion in the chase, we learn more about him and his family. Under suspicion because of his brother's desertion to Israel, he cannot leave the war-torn south. In the end, Tony risks his beloved Mercedes and his life, to take Zeina through the night to find her son in an isolated monastery. The final denouement leaves room for hope that the survivors may unite to form a family and rebuild both the wrecked house and their lives.

The film, beautifully shot by experienced documentary producer Philippe Aractingi, is halfway between a documentary and an understated, tender and heartrending drama. It shows that many years in the hard search for news have not blunted the sensitivity of his soul.