Channels of Rage

The Israeli rapper Subliminal (Kobi Shimoni) is described in the local rap scene as 'the one who rediscovered the Hebrew language’. He considers himself a proud, Zionist rapper. TN (Tamer Nafer) is a follower of Subliminal, but chooses to rap in Arabic. For three years, director Anat Halachmi followed these rising rap stars in the baffled country of Israel and distilled an apposite story about the untenable situation. The documentary starts in 2000: the rappers sit in a van like brothers, put their arms around each other and shout provocatively: ‘Film the coexistence’. This sentence keeps echoing throughout the film, during performances in smoky basements and later in large auditoriums, when a spectator sheds tears after a suicide attack, in the tumult outside the courthouse and during interviews with the rappers themselves, who come face to face in increasingly livid words. Every sentence, in whatever language, is consistently translated for the spectator. The great merit of CHANNELS OF RAGE is that it does not take sides. The rappers struggle just as much with their country as with their identity and the strain of success. And the disconcerting feeling that at any moment their musical war might spark off a real war is omnipresent.