Escaping Tel Aviv is a 2009 Egyptian movie that takes place in mostly in Israel (filmed in South Africa). The plot involves two intelligence officers - one works for the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (GID), and the other is an Israeli Arab who is an officer in Mossad, Israel's civilian intelligence agency.
Both officers speak fluent Arabic and Hebrew and have similar backgrounds, so much so that the Arabic title of the movie is Wilad al-'Am (ولاد العم) which translates to "the cousins."
The movie begins with the Mossad officer Daniel, using the Arabic name 'Izzat (played by Sherif Mounir), leaving Port Said, Egypt, with his Egyptian Muslim wife Salwa (played by Mona Zaki) and their two children. The wife is unaware of his true identity, having met him while he was living as an Egyptian for seven years. She was also unaware that the departure was planned. Once in Tel Aviv, she is desperate to return to Egypt with her children.
Egyptian intelligence officer Mustafa (played by Karim Abdel Aziz) is assigned the mission of repatriating Salwa and the two children from Tel Aviv back to Egypt. The movie revolves around his operation to do just that.
Some comments on the production. I was surprised at the scenes supposedly set in Tel Aviv - it was convincing. I don't speak Hebrew, so I will leave an assessment of that to someone who does. I was impressed that both of the lead actors, both Egyptians, were able to sound convincing (at least to me) in Hebrew. The majority of the movie was in pure Egyptian dialect.
It has been a long time since I have used Egyptian Arabic - it took me about half an hour to get my ear re-tuned to it. This movie was made for an Egyptian audience, so they are not speaking anything resembling Modern Standard Arabic. Egyptians speak fast, and have a unique staccato style of talking. I had to pay close attention.
As many of you know, I often criticize the subtitling of Arabic soundtracks. I found this one to be about as close as could be to the original Arabic. Some colloquialisms were changed to make sense to an English-speaking (or in this case, reading) audience. The Hebrew dialogue was subtitled in both English and Arabic.
A few criticisms. The thought that the Egyptian GID would dispatch one of its best officers to Israel to repatriate a housewife and two children is a bit far-fetched. This would normally be handled diplomatically - Egypt and Israel have had full diplomatic relations since 1980. In the movie, Salwa at one point asked an Israeli Arab to direct her to the Egyptian embassy.
I will not spoil the movie, but suffice it to say that some of the tactics used by Egyptian officer Mustafa are off-the-chart unrealistic. I will let you decide which.
It's a two hour movie, and with a fair amount of the suspension of disbelief required for most fictional stories, it is entertaining. As a former operations officer, it was interesting to watch a movie about intelligence officers where Mossad is not the dominant player.
It is available on Netflix.
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