It takes a brave, thoughtful – and importantly, compassionate – person to focus their comedy spotlight on one of the most awful situations of modern times, and that is exactly what Israeli activist-comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi does in her comedy show, which draws on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering up a prescient and unique voice amidst all the horror.
Coexistence, My Ass! follows Eliassi as she builds a comedy show of the same name, filmed over five years and charting her comedy journey alongside the ravages of conflict in the region. The film premiered at Sundance earlier this year, and also opens Millennium Docs Against Gravity 2025.
Raised in a bilingual Israeli-Palestinian village — the only intentionally integrated community in the country, we are told — Noam grows disillusioned with traditional peace activism. She pivots to stand-up and quickly attracts attention across the Middle East. But as her star rises, everything around her falls apart.
Lebanese/Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares, whose previous films include the impressive 2015 documentary Speed Sisters, opens her film in 2019 with Eliassi in Boston at Harvard University, and writing comedy as part of a Projects For Peace scheme.
In her comments about the subject, Fares says: “While I was making Speed Sisters I lived in the West Bank for 7 years. I was mainly immersed in Palestinian life under occupation, but I also met a few Israelis who were fighting to end the occupation. Some I met at weekly protests in the West Bank, others at parties in West Jerusalem.”
“Noam Shuster was different,” she continues. “I met Noam at a bar in Ramallah hanging out with her Palestinian friends and speaking way better Arabic than I do. Noam has unique qualities that I have seen in very few people. She has the ability to move seamlessly between groups that appear to be mutually exclusive. She is able to hold multiple perspectives on reality, refuses us-or-them narratives and doesn’t lose sight of what’s most important. She speaks truth to power in three different languages. And she is really funny.”
Noam spent her childhood in Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam, the ‘Oasis Of Peace’ co-operative, a mixed community where Palestinians and Jews live together by choice. Her background helps bring a very powerful and insightful voice, and as her comedy journey takes in the COVID pandemic and then the awful events of October 7 she must reflect on the changing world around her – and her own place within it. The film astutely manages to balance the laughs with the traumas, offering an alternate look at the situation in the Middle East.
The core of Eliassi’s comedy performance is to use her own background and experiences to challenge her audiences, but this can also mean finding herself hated as much as admired, and sometimes even called “an enemy of the state”.
But humour is her weapon, and while her family wants her to find a boy to settle down with, the events of October 7 change everything, and the notion of ‘coexistence’, that had defined her life for so long, has to take a backseat. The film is a funny and provocative look at a situation that continues to develop and evolve, and which underlines the need for compassionate voices like Noam Shuster Eliassi to keep the world’s focus on the realities (and complexities) of life within the troubled region.
US/France, 2025, 95mins
Dir/scr: Amber Fares
Production: My Teez Productions, Home Made Dos, Little Big Story, Intuitive Pictures
International sales: Autlook Films
Producers: Rachel Leah Jones, Amber Fares, Valérie Montmartin
Cinematography: Amit Chachamov, Philippe Bellaïche, Amber Fares
Editor: Rabab Haj Yahya
Music: William Ryan Fritch
