Life Sentences

Ajami is an area of Tel Aviv in Israel where Arabs, Palestinians, Jews and Christians live together in a tense atmosphere. Omar, an Israeli Arab, struggles to save his family from a gang of extortionists. He also courts a beautiful Christian girl: Hadir. Malek, an illegal Palestinian worker, tries to collect enough money to pay for his mother's operation. Dando, an Israeli cop, does his utmost to find his missing brother who may have been killed by Palestinians.

Israeli director Yaron Shani presents the second part of his “Love Trilogy”, the story of policeman Rashi, whose private life is thrown out of balance by a sudden loss of authority on the job.

Avigail is the perfect mother, wife to Rashi, and nurse. She sacrifices herself for everyone, but deep inside she feels alienated and directs her anger against herself. Yael is a wounded daughter, abandoned by her parents, she wants to be the mother of all orphans, neglecting the one who most needs her love, her sister Naama. Abused by her step-father, Naama is now mothering her aging abuser by day and degrading herself as a sex worker by night. Yet there is hope through connections. Naama follows the writing of Alice and feels a bond with her. Avigail and Yael become close. These women can help each other to change, break the cage of their self-destruction and be reborn.

Alice wakes up with a terrible feeling that she had been raped. Her attempts to repress these nightmarish thoughts collapse, as she finds herself petrified and unable to get out of her apartment. Just across the street lives Ziv, a 17-year old gentle and gifted musician who faces his own loss. Fate will soon join these two characters together and reveal how a crisis can produce both destruction and growth, violence and grace.