So much about the new film "Ajami" sounds like work, or medicine, or good intentions trumping good cinema. Yet this is one of the year's true standouts — a rich and absorbing drama co-directed by an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian, tackling multiple intersecting stories set in the Jewish-Muslim-and-Christian neighborhood of the title, in the largely Arab city of Jaffa near Tel Aviv.

The real miracle is that "Ajami" plays, successfully, some of the scrambled-chronology and massive-coincidence narrative games many of us resisted so mightily in films as disparate as "Crash," "Babel" and pikers such as "The Burning Plain" (though certainly "Amores Perros" pulled them off). "Ajami" begins with the shooting of a boy in the streets, collateral damage in an ongoing feud between warring factions involving Bedouin clan members and their rivals. The roving, snakelike camerawork puts us right there with the characters. They include a Palestinian refugee (Ibrahim Frege) trying to gather up enough money to pay for a family member's surgery; a Jewish detective (Eran Naim) searching, desperately, for his missing-presumed-dead brother; and a Palestinian (co-director Scandar Copti) whose secret lover is the daughter of a Jewish restaurateur.

The film is divided into chapters, and the success of "Ajami" can be measured by how involving each of its five primary strands remains throughout. Shot in sequence with non-actors blending, seamlessly, with trained performers, "Ajami" is a vibrant if anguished tapestry of blood and history repeating itself. There are moments in which you might get lost in the timeline or the precise relationships and order of things. But the work from everyone, in front of and behind the camera, is highly organic and blessedly low on melodramatics and just plain gripping. It's the right locale and the right subject, undertaken by the right directors, and deservedly "Ajami" is competing for this year's foreign-language Academy Award.

mjphillips@tribune.com

No MPAA rating
; cautions for violence and language
Cast
: Shahir Kabaha (Omar), Ibrahim Frege (Malek), Fouad Habash (Nasri), Ranin Karim (Hadir), Scandar Copti (Binj).
Credits
: Written, directed and edited by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani; produced by Mosh Danon, Thanassis Karathanos and Talia Kleinhendler. A Kino International release. In Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles. Running time: 2:00.