News

From Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti, the Israel-set “Happy Holidays” is a piercing, realistic family drama, the inflection points of which reveal deep cultural and political dimensions surrounding gender and ethnicity. Like his Oscar-nominated crime drama “Ajami” (which he co-directed with Yaron Shani), Copti’s second feature follows an ensemble of characters — Arab and Jewish alike — to assemble a multifaceted portrait of life in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.

In depicting strained family ties and rocky courtships, “Happy Holidays” veers between anxious and joyful. Copti and cinematographer Tim Kuhn shoot each interaction with an up-close, handheld intimacy that not only magnifies the subtle, powerful performances of the cast (many of them first-time actors), but welcomes the viewer into each scene, as though it were a complicated family reunion. At the center of its sprawling plot are four members of an Arab family, who share several casual, agreeable scenes together, but whose...