![]() ![]() The episode rightly rattles Ben, who keeps trying to go about his days as if nothing had happened - as if he hadn’t made anything happen. After confronting his Eritrean neighbors outside, he retreats to his cozy apartment and calls the city (anonymously, of course), only to witness soon thereafter how two policemen harass and brutalize one of the men with impunity. He worries if they keep leaning on it, this added greenery will outright snap, only his pleasant if needlessly abrasive demands go mostly unheeded. That is, until he sees from his balcony, two young Black neighbors casually hanging out by the still-fragile tree. When Ben plants a tree on the street right outside of his apartment, he feels as if he’s helping better the space for all those around. Theirs is what we’ve come to label a neighborhood in transition - namely, a community where low real estate prices have begun to attract couples like Ben and Raz who value the “multicultural” vibe of their environment in theory though perhaps not so much in practice. Together they’ve created a safe haven within their doors that staves off the relatively chaotic urban world right outside their door. Their shelves are adorned with masterfully manicured house plants and hip coffee table books on Bowie their every morning is scored by the sounds of their robot vacuum followed by the hum of their blender as they make each other green juices to kick start their day. Haguel’s deft dark comedy is a tight character study of the curdling effects of white guilt and white privilege.īen and Raz (real life couple Shlomi Bertonov and Ariel Wolf) live in a picturesque apartment. The fine line between being right and being righteous is at the center of Idan Haguel’s “ Concerned Citizen.” The Tel Aviv-set film follows a young gay man living in a neighborhood that’s supposedly on the upswing who has to question whether his commitment to bettering this increasingly gentrified community is all that selfless - or whether, in fact, that moniker he uses to describe himself and which gives the film its title is a smokescreen for more unseemly sentiments about his immigrant neighbors. ![]()
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