Nur Fibak and Avshalom Pollak in Ahed’s Knee.
Photo: Kino Lorber
The Israeli director Nadav Lapid makes abrasive moral dramas whose stories fragment and detour in unexpected and unsettling ways. The early scenes of his latest, Ahed’s Knee, suggest that this might be his oddest, most challenging effort yet, as we watch fractured images of auditions for a film about Ahed Tamimi, a teenage Palestinian activist whose slap of an Israeli soldier went viral in 2017. Tamimi was subsequently arrested, and an Israeli member of Parliament suggested she be shot in the knee. But it turns out that Ahed’s Knee isn’t really about Ahed or her knee — at least not directly. We soon leave the audition behind and follow a hotshot,…
