“Changing, Ebbing, Flowing”: Amber Fares’s ‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ Features Israeli Comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi

The name of Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi’s standup comedy show “Coexistence, My Ass!” might raise hackles, given the political situation in Israel and how it treats Palestinians. However, Eliassi’s derision is not targeted at the idea of peace between Palestinians and Israelis but instead asserts that “peaceful coexistence” is impossible when one group wields so much power over the other. Raised in the joint Jewish/Arab collective village of Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salam, she’s a longtime critic of the occupation. 

Eliassi’s show is now the basis for a documentary of the same name, Coexistence, My Ass!, in which Lebanese Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares follows her through the COVID-19 pandemic, the anti-corruption protests in Israel, and the aftermath of the October 7th attack and Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza. Fares has worked on several films in and about Palestine. Among other projects, she directed Speed Sisters (2015), about the West Bank-based first all-women Arab racecar team, and was co-producer and cinematographer on Erika Cohn’s The Judge (2017), which profiled Kholoud Al-Faqih of Ramallah, the first female sharia court judge in the Middle East. Having previously made a short about Eliassi’s comedy and activism for Al Jazeera, here Fares uses her story as a proxy for the greater problems of Israelis who fight to advocate for Palestinians.

Ahead of the film’s premiere at Sundance, we sat down with Fares over Zoom to discuss its long filming process and how October 7th shifted the tenor of the project. This conversation has been edited and condensed for time and clarity.

DOCUMENTARY: How long had you known Noam before you started this project?

AMBER FARES: I met Noam in 2012, 2013. I lived in Palestine for many years while I was making Speed Sisters, and we were casual friends from there. So I knew her for quite a few years. We have a lot of mutual friends as well.

D: What spurred you to make a film about her, and when did you start filming? 

AF: I started filming in November of 2019. I saw on social media that she was doing all these comedy things and was at Harvard. She came to Brooklyn, we had brunch to catch up, and she was telling me about this show she was developing. I thought that it was brilliant and asked if anyone was following her. At the time, I was thinking it would be a short film about her trying to break into the comedy scene in the US, probably going to university campuses and speaking about Israel-Palestine. I went to Harvard and filmed with her that weekend. The opening of the film is actually the first scene I filmed with Noam. We walked into Harvard Yard and she made that joke about the statue, and I thought “Okay, this is going to be fun.” 

I then went to Israel with her to Neve Shalom for a week in January of 2020, and the plan was to go back to Harvard and continue filming. Then the pandemic hit. I had Noam film herself for a while, and eventually realized the film had shifted and would now mostly take place in Israel. Since I wouldn’t be able to physically be there, I needed a partner. I contacted Rachel Leah Jones (Advocate), and she came on—first just to help me out, and then as a producer. She’s been very involved, along with her partner, Philippe Bellaïche, who we call Bella, who’s an amazing cinematographer. Once I could travel there, I’d go two or three times a year and shoot. Before that, Rachel and Bella filmed throughout 2020 and much of 2021, and they also filmed for the documentary in between my visits. 

We started the edit around this time last year. We’d done some editing before then, but this was when we brought on Rabab Haj Yahya, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and speaks all three languages in the film—Arabic, Hebrew, and English. She edited Speed Sisters as well.

D: What was the process like during the quarantine period, when you were directing remotely?

AF: Sometimes Rachel and Bella were like, “This is happening, and this is how we think it should be shot.” There are other times where I said, “I think we need to have this. Let’s brainstorm about how we could get it.” It was a very collaborative relationship, and I had to depend on them both culturally and linguistically; I don’t speak Hebrew. I also had a lot to learn about what it’s like to be a leftist in Israel, and I relied a lot on their local knowledge for that. They’re amazing filmmakers in their own right, and I was very lucky to be able to work with them.

D: Did anything shape the way you incorporated Noam’s namesake show into the film’s structure? There’s a lot of talk about comedians as political activists now, and her story is a particularly sharp example of that.

AF: Hannah Gadsby was an inspiration for sure. The show was filmed toward the end, when the majority of the documentary was done. I always had it in mind to shoot it with multiple cameras like a high-end production and then weave it into the film. As we were editing, we used clips from her earlier shows as placeholders. “This is the kind of joke we need here, this one will go here.” Some of the show was written at the last minute, after October 7th, and she’d never performed those bits before then. I don’t know if she’d still end the show the same way; it’s always changing, ebbing, and flowing, depending on where she’s at. I don’t know if she crafted that performance specifically with the film in mind. The film is a collaboration with her.

D: Both her comedy and activism are addressing this continually evolving ongoing situation, which becomes particularly acute since the October 7th attack and the retaliation that happened during filming. How did you determine you had the right stopping point for the production? Just a few months later, there’s been this new major development with the ceasefire.

AF: October 7th brought this new urgency and relevancy for the film, and really upped the stakes. It was hard, because we were living through it while we were trying to film it. We needed to give people space to grieve; you don’t want to shove a camera in someone’s face. And Rabab has family in Gaza, I have family in Lebanon, Noam and Rachel were obviously affected. This impacted the entire team in a very visceral way.

We understood that October 7th and the events after were going to be the ending. I went back to Israel in December 2023 and then April of 2024 to shoot the antiwar protest, and after that it felt like there wasn’t anything more we could say. We always knew the film was going to end with Noam on stage; it was just a matter of what she said.

D: Over the last year, there’s been a great deal of suppression of any art or speech that’s sympathetic to Palestinians. Did October 7th shift anything concerning your ability to fund and pitch this project?

AF: Definitely. We still aren’t fully funded. But it’s also generated more interest, especially going into Sundance now, obviously. We won Best Rough Cut at IDFA Forum in November 2023. I think we were in an interesting position, since we had been filming for so long before October 7th. So much media has come out about that day, but we had this long tail leading up to it.

D: We see in the film how much harassment and criticism Noam gets for defending Palestinians. Has this project drawn any similar fire?

AF: I did not have to navigate these waters with Speed Sisters, but that film also didn’t get distribution in the United States. Bringing films that are sympathetic to Palestine is always tough; this isn’t anything new. With this film, I have no idea what to expect. I think we’ve made a great film with a strong message, and all we can do is stay true to that and try not to get bogged down. I’m happy to listen to criticism that I think is worthwhile. With the other stuff, I think we have to push through and hope for the best. You see No Other Land and its reception despite the backlash, and that gives me hope.

D: That film also had a long road to get official distribution. What do you have in place on that front so far? Any hopes going into Sundance?

AF: We have a sales agent, with Autlook representing us. We have Arte and TVO [formerly TV Ontario], which is great. Whether U.S. distribution happens thanks to Sundance, I don’t know. I think there is interest. We will see what happens. The rest is just looking for where we’re taking the film in Europe and for other premieres; that’s our focus right now.

Dan Schindel is a freelance critic and full-time copy editor living in Brooklyn. He has previously worked as the associate editor for documentary at Hyperallergic.