Writer and Director: Idan Haguel
Someone who cares deeply about their local community or nosy neighbour? Shlomi Bertonov’s Ben in new film Concerned Citizen by Idan Haguel screening at the UK Jewish Film Festival is a man with considerable anxiety about the very specific place where he hopes to bring a child into the world. A rare LGBTQIA+ story set in Israel, this sympathetic examination of mental health intersects with themes of immigration, gentrification and middle-class guilt.
Ben and his boyfriend Raz announce plans to have a child as soon as they can select an egg donor. But this triggers a process of reflection for Ben who worries for the safety of a young tree planted outside, a grief-stricken neighbour he hears weeping upstairs and the security of the area. Conflicted about his duties, Ben makes a fateful call to the police and is unable to absolve his guilt.
Concerned Citizen is a title with multiple meanings that explores individual anxiety but also personal responsibility to protect and enhance the area in which the characters live. This complex process of gentrification becomes a discussion about safety as well as aspirations that perhaps shield Ben in particular to the character of the area, and the humanity he ought to display, but struggles to find sufficient compassion for lives beyond his own – something that gets to the heart of Ben’s unvoiced fears about his suitability for parenthood.
Haguel’s film reflects some of Ben’s indecision about what he should think and how he should behave, and the writer-director includes lots of different strands that don’t make for a fully satisfying narrative. Concerned Citizen includes Ben’s withdrawal from his partner Raz, the particular dedication to the fate of the tree but only when strangers touch it, police brutality and the protagonist’s need to confront racist bullies as some kind of penance for his own failings for which he also attends therapy. Across only 85-minute, it is a lot to process without much resolution.
Bertonov’s Ben is consequently full of contradictions both socially inhibited yet still willing to make potentially rash decisions that don’t quite play out as he expects. Bertonov gives the character a mix of moral outrage and bravery while a revealing therapy session feels like a culmination of these traits. Partner Raz played by Ariel Wolf has less to work with, absent from the camera for much of the film but silently accepting Ben’s strange behaviour, given only a late conversation with an unlikely female friend to explore his own reactions.
Haguel’s film presents a very contemporary couple in modern Tel Aviv considering a changing city and its consequences for individual identity and what it means for the future of neighbourhoods. Despite the conclusion, it is far harder to understand what the Director and the film have to say about the role of immigration here with these characters ambiguously presented from Ben’s perspective. Maybe Ben is just a nosey neighbour who wants to control the people around him, and that is a position which is much harder to sympathise with.
The UK Jewish Film Festival 2022 takes place in cinemas nationwide from 10 – 20 November, and online from 21-27 November.
