‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ Shows an Israeli Comic’s Hilarious, Heartrending Fight for Middle East Peace: ‘There Is Really No Other Alternative’

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias There is a moment deep into “Coexistence, My Ass!” — director Amber Fares’ heartrending, trenchant, often side-splittingly funny documentary about Israeli comedian and activist Noam Shuster Eliassi — when a fellow comic lobbies Eliassi to soften her barbed political comedy in the wake of the Oct.

7 Hamas attacks. “Our mission as comedians is to bring people together. To unify,” her friend insists. “My goal is to voice resistance to this insane show of force that has swept everyone up blindly,” Eliassi testily replies.

It’s an exchange that reveals the moral clarity — and not inconsiderable force — behind her own response to Israel’s overwhelming retaliatory onslaught against the Palestinian people. “Coexistence, My Ass!” nevertheless illustrates how deeply committed Eliassi is to bringing people together, laying bare her conviction that behind the inherited political wisdom that Israeli-Palestinian peace is too complex, there lies a “painfully simple” reality that there is no alternative.

The film, described by Variety’s Tomris Laffly after its Sundance premiere as an “urgent, eye-opening and enormously compassionate documentary,” travels to the Thessaloniki Intl.