The Band's Visit

Eran Kolirin's gently low-key character piece from Israel follows an Egyptian police band on a trip to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center in Israel, and their wrong turn to a sleepy little town where their arrival is the closest thing to excitement. "No Arab Cultural Center. No Israeli Cultural Center. No culture of any kind," explains a restaurant owner, a funny, spirited, divorced woman who arranges to put them all up for the night. There's no instant cultural understanding, merely the sometimes awkward, sometimes easy interactions of former national enemies who don't speak the same language but manage to find common ground nonetheless. This sweet little production won the Un Certain Regard jury prize at Cannes, two European Film Awards, and eight Israeli Film Academy Awards (including Best Picture), and yet was disqualified as an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film because so much of the dialogue was in English. Once again the Academy misses the point: These folks have to resort to a foreign language to communicate. Includes the featurette "The Band's Visit: Making the Fairy Tale" and a stills gallery.