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The Band's Visit

2007, Comedy/Drama, 1h 26m

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Critics Consensus

The Band's Visit is both a clever, subtle slice-of-life comedy, and poignant cross-cultural exploration. Read critic reviews

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The band's visit   photos.

The eight Egyptian musicians who comprise the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrive by mistake in a small town in Israel's Negev Desert. Their booking set for a different city, and with no transportation out of the town or any hotels to stay at, the band settles at a restaurant owned by Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), who offers them lodging. Overcoming ethnic barriers, the Egyptians find diversion and companionship with the Israelis through a pervading undercurrent of shared melancholy.

Rating: PG-13 (Brief Strong Language)

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Original Language: Arabic

Director: Eran Kolirin

Producer: Ehud Bleiberg , Koby Gal-Raday , Guy Jacoel , Eilon Ratzkovsky , Yossi Uzrad

Writer: Eran Kolirin

Release Date (Theaters): Feb 8, 2008  limited

Release Date (Streaming): Sep 27, 2008

Box Office (Gross USA): $3.1M

Runtime: 1h 26m

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Production Co: July August Productions, Keshet Broadcasting, Tel Aviv, Bleiberg Entertainment

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Cast & Crew

Sasson Gabay

Ronit Elkabetz

Saleh Bakri

Khalifa Natour

Rubi Moskovitz

Uri Gavriel

Imad Jabarin

Camal Abdel Azim

Hilla Sarjon

Eran Kolirin

Ehud Bleiberg

Koby Gal-Raday

Eilon Ratzkovsky

Yossi Uzrad

Shaï Goldman

Cinematographer

Arik Leibovitch

Film Editing

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Critics Consensus: Gold is a Fool’s Paradise, Roscoe is Not Welcome

Critic Reviews for The Band's Visit

Audience reviews for the band's visit.

A trip to Israeli nowheresville by a minor Egyptian civic band is an occasion for a interesting little filmic investigation into what forces make us all tick. Everyone expects trouble ... and are pleasantly disappointed. Slowly budding revelation sparkles like light on a pond across the faces of this cast of unknowns.

It was a movie that almost felt ashamed of itself, but in a good/weird way. It was the opposite of dramatic or flashy, but kept you captivated anyway. I liked it!

A touching and considered slice of life that's kind of like those small-town-in-the-Midwest movies where everyone's in pain, except it happens in the Israeli desert, and the new guys in town are a police band from Egypt. A lean film, but one that still takes its time, and one that was well lauded on the festival circuit. Definitely worth a look - reminded me of Wim Wenders for no obvious reason.

<i>"Once-not long ago-a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many remember this...It wasn't that important."</i> A band comprised of members of the Egyptian police force head to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves lost in the wrong town. <center><font size=+2 face="Century Schoolbook"><b><u>REVIEW</u></b></font></center> 'The Band's Visit' is a cinematic breath of fresh air in a market overwrought with cine dreck. It tells the story of an Egyptian Police band that has gone over to Israel for a concert at an Arab cultural centre, only to find that they have ended up in the wrong town. In a period of 24 hours, they manage to establish friendships among some of the town's off beat residents. It shows that despite cultural differences between Arabs and Jews, they manage to (for the most part) rise above prejudices and make the most of an awkward situation. Major kudos to the film's writer/director for forging a finely tuned story, as well as a cast to act out their parts equally well. This film may remind you at times of some of the tongue in cheek comedies of Aki Kaurismaki.

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The eight men wear sky-blue uniforms with gold braid on the shoulders. They look like extras in an opera. They dismount from a bus in the middle of nowhere and stand uncertainly on the sidewalk. They are near a highway interchange, leading no doubt to where they’d rather be. Across the street is a small cafe. Regarding them are two bored layabouts and a sadly, darkly beautiful woman.

They are a band from Egypt, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra. Their leader, a severe man with a perpetually dour expression, crosses the street and asks the woman for directions to the Arab Cultural Center. She looks at him as if he stepped off a flying saucer. “Here there is no Arab culture,” she says. “Also, no Israeli culture. Here there is no culture at all.”

They are in the middle of the Israeli desert, having taken the wrong bus to the wrong destination. Another bus will not come until tomorrow. “ The Band ’s Visit” begins with this premise, which could supply the makings of a comedy, and turns into a quiet, sympathetic film about the loneliness that surrounds us. Oh, and there is some comedy, after all.

The town they have arrived at is lacking in interest even for those who live there. It is seemingly without activity. The bandleader, named Tewfiq ( Sasson Gabai ), asks if there is a hotel. The woman, Dina ( Ronit Elkabetz ), is amused. No hotel.

They communicate in careful, correct English; she more fluent, he weighing every word. Tewfiq explains their dilemma.

They are to play a concert tomorrow at the opening of a new Arab cultural center in a place has that almost, but not quite, the same name as the place they are in.

Tewfiq starts out to lead a march down the highway in the correct direction. There is some dissent, especially from the tall young troublemaker Haled ( Saleh Bakri ). He complains that they have not eaten. After some awkward negotiations (they have little Israeli currency), the Egyptians are served soup and bread in Dina’s cafe. It is strange, how the static, barren, lifeless nature of the town seeps into the picture, even though the writer-director Eran Kolirin uses no establishing shots or any effort at all to show us anything beyond the cafe — and later, Dina’s apartment and an almost empty restaurant.

Dina offers to put up Tewfiq and Haled at her apartment, and tells the young layabouts (who seem permanently anchored to their chairs outside her cafe) that they must take the others home to their families. And then begins a long, quiet night of guarded revelations, shared isolation and tentative tenderness. Dina is tough but not invulnerable. Life has given her little that she hoped for. Tewfiq is a man with an invisible psychic weight on his shoulders. Haled, under everything, is an awkward kid. They go for a snack at the restaurant, its barren tables reaching away under bright lights, and Dina points out a man who comes in with his family. A sometime lover of hers, she tells Tewfiq. Even adultery seems weary here.

When the three end up back at Dina’s apartment, where she offers them wine, the evening settles down into resignation. It is clear that Dina feels tender toward Tewfiq, that she can see through his timid reserve to the good soul inside. But there is no movement. Later, when he makes a personal revelation, it is essentially an apology. The movie avoids what we might expect, a meeting of the minds, and gives us instead a sharing of quiet desperation.

As Dina and Twefiq, Ronit Elkabetz and Sasson Gabai bring great fondness and amusement to their characters. She is pushing middle age, he is being pushed by it. It is impossible for this night to lead to anything in their future lives. But it could lead to a night to remember.

Gabai plays the bandleader as so repressed or shy or wounded that he seems closed inside himself. As we watch Elkabetz putting on a new dress for the evening and inspecting herself in the mirror, we see not vanity but hope. Throughout the evening, we note her assertion, her confidence, her easily assumed air of independence. Yet when she gazes into the man’s eyes, she sighs with regret and mentions that as a girl she loved the Omar Sharif movies that played daily on Israeli TV, but play no more.

There are some amusing interludes. A band member plays the first few notes of a sonata he has not finished (after years). A bandmate calls him Schubert. A local man keeps solitary vigil by a pay phone, waiting for a call from the girl he loves. He has an insistent way of showing his impatience when another uses the phone.

In the morning, the band reassembles and leaves. “The Band’s Visit” has not provided any of the narrative payoffs we might have expected, but has provided something more valuable: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Band's Visit (2008)

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language

Sasson Gabai as Tewfiq

Ronit Elkabetz as Dina

Saleh Bakri as Haled

Khalifa Natour as Simon

Mad Jabarin as Camal

Written and directed by

• Eran Kolirin

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The Band's Visit (2007)

Original title: ביקור התזמורת.

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A small Egyptian police band travels to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves stuck in the wrong town.

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This heartwarming and poignant winner of the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard prize is the mesmerizing and witty story of strangers in a strange land. A fading Egyptian police band arrives in Israel to play at the Arab Cultural Center. When they take the wrong bus, the band members find themselves in a desolate Israeli village. With no other option than to spend the night with the local townspeople, the two distinctly different cultures realize the universal bonds of love, music and life. Set against a breathtaking desert landscape, this cross-cultural comedy proves that getting lost is sometimes the best way to find yourself.

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indieWIRE INTERVIEW | “The Band’s Visit” Director “Eran Kolirin

Erica abeel.

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After the screening in last year’s Cannes , the applause wouldn’t stop, keeping the visibly moved filmmakers and cast in the theater. The film was “ The Band’s Visit ,” a first feature from Israeli director Eran Kolirin . Arriving without buzz on the Croisette, it quickly emerged as a gem of Cannes ’07, and nabbed the international critic’s prize for the Un Certain Regard section. “Band” is a quiet, pared-down film, which like a story by Chekhov, strips bare its characters’ lives. Toplined by the great Ronit Elkabetz , leading Israeli actor Sasson Gabai , and gifted Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri , it concerns an Egyptian Police band that arrives in Israel to play at an initiation ceremony for an Arab cultural center.

Through a series of mishaps, the men end up stranded in a desolate little Israeli town east of nowhere in the heart of the desert. Dina (Elkabetz), the sexy, gravel-voiced owner of a cafe, sees that the Egyptians are fed and lodged for the night till the morning bus. During the band’s brief visit, the Egyptians and their Israeli hosts connect in ways that promote the peace process more than a fly-by from Condi Rice. Mercifully, Kolirin’s implied brief for peaceful co-existence also dodges sentimentality.

“Not many remember this… It wasn’t that important,” states the opening title about the story to unfold. It’s a wonderful ploy. Of course it’s not important in the cosmic scheme, nor is anything, viewed in that context, Kolirin suggests — but given the human need to disclose oneself to others, what happens is damned important. In artfully paced scenes, sensual, forthright Dina reveals to Tewfiq (Gabai) her messy romantic past — “I fucked up.” A portrait of zipped-up dignity in his powder blue uniform, Tewfiq scarcely dares to meet her eye. Like a character out of “ Uncle Vanya ,” Dina is stuck in a life without great prospects, yet is determined to persevere (rather more cheerfully than her Russian precursors). Tewfiq, for his part, eventually reveals his own sadnesses. In one of many comic interludes, ladies man Haled (the studly Bakri) gives a late-blooming Israeli boy lessons in how to hit on a girl, and describes in rhapsodic Arabic what it’s like to make love. Unlike in Cannes, unfortunately, someone here made the mistake of translating the Arabic.

“Band” was recently pulled from the contest for best foreign language Oscar, because it’s more in English than Hebrew. Which is to miss the point. In fact, what Kolirin is getting at in this wondrous film is the failure of any language at all to articulate the topography of loss.

indieWIRE caught up with Kolirin — who speaks serviceable, if heavily accented, English — in New York, during a publicity junket to promote his film.

indieWIRE: How did you arrive at the deliberate, quiet tone of this film?

Eran Kolirin : The most important thing for me is the tone, the feeling, the pace. But why I’m doing this is not very clear to me. It’s much more of an instinctual thing than an analytical process.

iW: Could you explain why you chose to open with the statement that what happens in the film “wasn’t that important?”

Kolirin: The movie has this very big political context. Yet it focuses on the relatively uneventful things that happen. But of course those things are very important for me. That’s why I’ve spent so much of my time doing this movie. So it has a kind of sarcasm.

iW: Did that Egyptian band really exist?

Kolirin: Nothing is real in the movie.

iW: I’ve heard the film is banned in Egypt.

Kolirin: It doesn’t apply just to my film. Any Israeli film would be banned in Egypt.

iW: Have you gotten much feedback from Egyptians?

Kolirin: At festivals there’s always one spectator from Egypt who says, ‘I like it, it moved me, reminds me of so many things.’ I get a lot of reaction from the Arab world at fests. But the percentage of people from the Arab world who like it should be the same as anywhere else.

iW: Has “The Band’s Visit” been shown in the occupied territories?

Kolirin: No, we tried to have a projection in Ramallah, but it turned out to be a very delicate time because of tension between Hamas and Fatah. No one wanted to host the screening.

iW: How did you decide to cast Sasson Gabai as Tewfiq the band leader?

Kolirin: There’s no big sexy story about casting this movie. I met Sasson and he really liked the script. And I had a good feeling talking to him, he has this kind of oora [aura] about him, like an Egyptian star — though he’s not Egyptian. I thought his allure could add to this role the extra charm of old-style stardom.

iW: As an Israeli, did Gabai have any hesitation about playing an Egyptian?

Kolirin: Not at all, for him it was like coming home, a nostalgic thing. He was born in Iraq, speaks Arabic, and the themes of the movie and Arabic music resonate from his own background. For him it was a very personal role.

iW: Any problems with casting the Palestininan Saleh Bakri, the sexy guy who gets the girl, in an Israeli film?

Kolirin: Everything you do with Palestinians in Israel someone will criticize. But Bakri has also played in Israeli theater. You can’t box him into a position of “Palestinian actor.” He has a very strong personality and wanted to do the role.

iW: How did you come up with the character of Dina?

Kolirin: She was the most incomplete character for me in the script. I was afraid she’s a cliche, this femme fatale from the desert who gets men here and there. She wasn’t complete until I met Ronit in the rehearsal. She was sitting on a table and swinging her legs like a kid, listening to what I was saying. And then I got that this character most of all is like a teenage girl, looking for something to happen — not this heavy romantic woman. And she had this dance inside her. Life? Okay, sometimes good, sometimes bad…

iW: Could you talk about the touching dynamic between Tewfiq and Dina?

Kolirin: Sometimes if you get a good cast, which is the most difficult thing, and you get the camera rolling, good things happen.

iW: You mean, they improvised?

Kolirin: No no, I’m a complete control freak. We worked a lot on the pace and where to put the silences. We choreographed the gestures and movements. We had a lot of rehearsals and a lot of takes. Also, there’s something special that comes out of those two actors: he’s water and she’s fire.

iW: There’s a great sense of empty space in this film. What made you gravitate toward such a spare look?

Kolirin: I get a headache when films are too filled up with people. And I don’t understand what’s going on if there are too many extras walking around. This film was very comfortable for me, I want to see just the actors. This is how I can concentrate.

iW: How did you hit on the pivotal idea of the band getting lost?

Kolirin: I was reading a book called “ Journey to Israel ” and the author told how he came to Israel by car for the first time and was so stressed and disoriented, instead of getting to Tel Aviv, he ends up in Natania. Because of this mistake, he describes the conversation he has with a girl at the information desk at the hotel. That’s what inspired the movie.

iW: Could you talk about the film’s stark color scheme — for instance, the contrast between Dina’s crimson dress and the band’s powder blue uniforms?

Kolirin: I thought the film should have the tone of a legend. It’s also about contradictions. They [Tewfiq and Dina] are sitting in the shish kebab restaurant, and they’re speaking about art and poetry. In the roller rink Haled recites a Sufi poem. I like small disturbances, contradictions — like Tewfiq, this big commander, sitting in that restaurant. Like a shot where you see the band all in a row at the airport, and a janitor crosses the screen with a vacuum cleaner.

iW: How did you find so much humor in this material?

Kolirin: Actually, I was completely serious about everything. I thought it was more of a smile movie — maybe when a lot of people smile together it’s a laugh. For me there was always a grain of melancholy. I was more involved in finding the accurate tone of the film, and the awkwardness. The reaction to the rough cut was, we thought it was going to be a funny movie. And then we came to Cannes and the projection started and people laughed again and again, and we looked at each other, and we had no idea that it was a laugh out loud movie.

iW: What was your reaction to that standing O in Cannes?

Kolirin: I wasn’t really there. It’s like your wedding day. You don’t really understand it when you’re there.

iW: Did you consider other endings for the film?

Kolirin: In the script I had another ending. I was trying to push the movie toward a dramatic end. We heard a lot from script experts saying, ‘let’s have some more energy.’ But all those endings, when I tried to push it, didn’t feel right for me. Tewqui and Dina can never be together, this would be a complete lie.

iW: And Haled and Dina?

Kolirin: No, for him she was just the means to pass the night. Once the big love has gone away, you’re just left with how to pass your night. At the end of the day this story has something in its genetics. If you listen well enough and you follow its genetics, there’s no other end.

iW: Do you see yourself working mainly in Israel?

Kolirin: I’m very attracted to the stories in Israel. I understand the people. I sit on the bus and see someone and have a feeling for the character. I don’t really have this instinct here. But if I get a script which touches me, maybe.

iW: It’s a great time for Israeli filmmakers. Did you expect this for yourself?

Kolirin: That big? No, we didn’t imagine. This connection with the audience, it’s amazing.

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The Band's Visit

Cast & crew.

Sasson Gabai

Ronit Elkabetz

Saleh Bakri

Rubi Moskovitz

Khalifa Natour

• Average 7.9
• Reviews 119

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

...ultimately cut from the same cloth, with similar feelings and thoughts, hopes and disappointments, experiencing the same loneliness, love and longing in life...

Even without the coveted Oscar pedigree, this modest comedy has to be the most delightful and enjoyable movie now playing in local theaters.

Everything in it is telegraphed to the point of exasperation. [Full review in Spanish]

Tenderly written, beautifully photographed, and patiently directed.

For all of its dry wit and visual gags, The Band's Visit is ultimately a poignant slice of life about people from totally different backgrounds and cultures forging unexpected connections and healing old wounds.

It's not going to solve any problems in the Middle East, and it doesn't attempt to, either. It's just a quiet story about the uncomfortable charm of coerced hospitality.

It's both quintessentially Israeli and an enjoyable experience that will touch audiences no matter what their background.

[Writer/director Eran] Kolirin finds bittersweet humor in the comedy of their melancholy lives and fumbling efforts at communication and common ground

Filmmaker Kolirin shows Israelis what they've been missing, and the rest of us what the Middle East could be, in the gentle, human-scale antics of the confused Egyptian band.

Additional Info

• Genre : Comedy, Drama
• Release Date : December 7, 2007
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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The Band's Visit

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, eran kolirin, sasson gabay, ronit elkabetz, saleh bakri, imad jabarin, hisham khoury, photos & videos, technical specs.

A small Egyptian Police band arrives in Israel. They are supposed to play at an initiation ceremony but instead are left stranded at the airport. The band tries to make their way on their own, only to find themselves in a desolate, small Israeli town, somewhere in the heart of the desert. A lost band in a lost town.

Francois Kheel

Tarak kopty, eyad sheety, uri gavriel, ahuva keren, shlomi avraham, hila surjon fischer, rubi moscovich, khalifa natour, doron ashkenazi, orit azoulay, ehud bleiberg, sophie dulac, itai elohav, koby gal-raday, shai goldman, tami kushnir, arik lahav-leibovitz, eilon ratzkovsky, habib shehadeh hanna, yossi uzrad, michel zana.

The Band's Visit

Miscellaneous Notes

Winner of the Bridging the Border's Award at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Winner of the Jury Coup de Coeur Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

Released in United States 2007

Released in United States 2008

Released in United States December 7, 2007

Released in United States January 2008

Released in United States May 2007

Released in United States November 2007

Released in United States on Video July 29, 2008

Released in United States September 2007

Released in United States Winter February 8, 2008

Shown at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) May 16-27, 2007.

Shown at London Film Festival (Film on the Square) October 17-November 1, 2007.

Shown at Palm Springs International Film Festival January 3-14, 2008.

Shown at Santa Barbara International Film Festival (World Cinema) January 24-February 3, 2008.

Shown at Telluride Film Festival August 31-September 3, 2007.

Shown at Toronto International Film Festival (Contemporary World Cinema) September 6-15, 2007.

Shown at Vancouver International Film Festival (Cinema of Our Time) September 27-October 12, 2007.

Feature directorial debut for Eran Kolirin.

Sony Pictures Classics acquired domestic distribution rights at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for a reported low-six figures.

Released in United States 2007 (Shown at London Film Festival (Film on the Square) October 17-November 1, 2007.)

Released in United States 2007 (Shown at Telluride Film Festival August 31-September 3, 2007.)

Released in United States 2007 (Shown at Vancouver International Film Festival (Cinema of Our Time) September 27-October 12, 2007.)

Released in United States 2008 (Shown at Santa Barbara International Film Festival (World Cinema) January 24-February 3, 2008.)

Released in United States January 2008 (Shown at Palm Springs International Film Festival January 3-14, 2008.)

Released in United States May 2007 (Shown at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) May 16-27, 2007.)

Released in United States September 2007 (Shown at Toronto International Film Festival (Contemporary World Cinema) September 6-15, 2007.)

Released in United States November 2007 (Shown at AFI/Los Angeles International Film Festival (World Cinema) November 1-11, 2007.)

Released in United States December 7, 2007 (one week Oscar qualifying run; New York City and Los Angeles)

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The Band’s Visit: From Movie to Musical

The Band’s Visit has the rare honor of becoming a phenomenal success twice, first as a film and later as a musical. Both times, this beloved tale transcended its modest origins to capture the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere.  

Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin in his directorial film debut, The Band’s Visit movie tells the story of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra who mistakenly travel to the wrong Israeli town. Intending to go to an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikva, the sixth largest city in Israel at the time, the Orchestra ends up on a bus to the fictional town of Bet Hatikva in southern Israel’s Negev Desert. Kolirin cast several famous actors in his film, including the Baghdad-born Israeli actor Sasson Gabai, the Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz, and the Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri.  

Selected for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard (“At a Glance”) category, which highlights films made by newer directors or ones with non-traditional stories and innovative filmmaking techniques, The Band’s Visit charmed audiences at the festival, winning a Special Jury Award ( Coup de cœur du jury ). Released in Israel later that year, the film would go on to win seven Ophir Awards from the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, including Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay and Music. Submitted by Israel for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category of the Oscars, the film was disqualified because the majority of the dialogue is spoken in English, not Hebrew or Arabic.  

Although the plot is wholly original, the film’s embrace of Egyptian cinema and Middle Eastern music was influenced by experiences from Kolirin’s childhood. “ When I was a kid, my family and I used to watch Egyptian movies,” he shared in 2007. “This was a fairly common Israeli family practice, circa the early 1980’s. In the late afternoon on Fridays, we’d watch with bated breaths the convoluted plots, the impossible loves and the heart-breaking pain of Omar Sharif, Pathen Hamama, I’del Imam, and the rest of that crew on the one and only TV channel that the country had. This was kind of weird, actually, for a country that spent half of its existence in a state of war with Egypt, and the other half in a sort of cold, correct peace with its neighbor to the south. Sometimes, after the Arab movie, they’d broadcast a performance of the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s orchestra.” Established in 1948, the IBA’s Arabic Orchestra, whose members were mostly Jewish immigrants from Iraq and Egypt, made it their mission to uplift and celebrate Arabic music in Israel and beyond.  

When The Band’s Visit was screened in New York at the Other Israel Film Festival, which is dedicated to the work of both Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, it caught the eye of theatre producer Orin Wolf. “I immediately hungered to put the story onstage,” he said in a 2018 interview with Dramatics . “For me, the filmmaker Eran Kolirin made what felt like a piece of theatre about people being stuck. That’s something that always interests me theatrically: people being stuck in one place. The story dealt with language barriers, people struggling to find the right words, and it was about musicians. It felt to me like it was a natural fit for the stage.” After several conversations, Wolf convinced Kolirin to grant him the stage rights to the story. At which point the producer, who had recently found success as part of the Broadway producing team for the film-to-musical Once, pondered whether to pursue the story as a play or a musical.  

Legendary Broadway producer Hal Prince, who was mentoring Wolf, connected him with playwright Itamar Moses (whose Bach at Lepzig played at Writers Theatre in 2007 ) and composer David Yazbe c k ( The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Women of the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ) in 2013. Moses, whose parents are Israeli, and Yazbek, whose mother is Jewish and father Lebanese, both connected strongly with the material and saw its potential. Moses remembered, “I felt the intimacy of the story, how much it depended on small connections between individuals, which theatre excels at. How still it was. And there was a very organic reason for there to be music in it. First, there’s this band. And second, music is one of the zones of connection between the people, a language that the characters use to communicate. I thought, ‘OK, that justifies it being a musical.’”  

The team soon added its final member, director David Cromer, who hails from Skokie and has directed at WT many times over the years, most recently with Next to Normal in 2019 . Atlantic Theatre Company in New York produced the world premiere of the musical in late 2016, where it ran for two months. Reviews and response for the Off-Broadway production were strong, with the show winning several Drama Desk and Obie Awards. Could the musical successfully transfer to Broadway and find a broader audience for its quieter tale of human connection? Would it survive in a season that also included far more familiar titles, such as the original musicals Frozen , SpongeBob SquarePants , and Mean Girls as well as splashy revivals of beloved classics My Fair Lady, Carousel and Once on This Island?  

The answer was a resounding yes. The musical opened to rave reviews in November 2017, with The New York Times calling it “a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim: an honest-to-God musical for grown-ups.” The production would end up running for over a year and a half. At the 2018 Tony Awards, the show went home with ten awards, including Best Musical, Book, Score, Actor, Actress and Director, making it only the fourth musical to win the unofficial “Big Six” awards. The cast recording would also win a 2019 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album.  

Writers Theatre and TheatreSquared’s co-production of The Band’s Visit marks the musical’s regional premiere, the first original production in America since the Broadway national tour.   

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Review: ‘The Band’s Visit’ Is a Ravishing Musical That Whispers With Romance

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By Ben Brantley

• Nov. 9, 2017

Breaking news for Broadway theatergoers, even — or perhaps especially — those who thought they were past the age of infatuation: It is time to fall in love again.

One of the most ravishing musicals you will ever be seduced by opened on Thursday night at the Barrymore Theater. It is called “The Band’s Visit,” and its undeniable allure is not of the hard-charging, brightly blaring sort common to box-office extravaganzas.

Instead, this portrait of a single night in a tiny Israeli desert town confirms a lyric that arrives, like nearly everything in this remarkable show, on a breath of reluctantly romantic hope: “Nothing is as beautiful as something you don’t expect.”

With songs by David Yazbek and a script by Itamar Moses, “The Band’s Visit” is a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim: an honest-to-God musical for grown-ups. It is not a work to be punctuated with rowdy cheers and foot-stomping ovations, despite the uncanny virtuosity of Mr. Yazbek’s benchmark score.

That would stop the show, and you really don’t want that to happen. Directed by David Cromer with an inspired inventiveness that never calls attention to itself, “The Band’s Visit” flows with the grave and joyful insistence of life itself. All it asks is that you be quiet enough to hear the music in the murmurs, whispers and silences of human existence at its most mundane — and transcendent.

And, oh yes, be willing to have your heart broken, at least a little. Because “The Band’s Visit,” which stars a magnificent Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub as would-be lovers in a not-quite paradise, is like life in that way, too.

There were worries that this finely detailed show, based on Eran Kolirin’s screenplay for the 2007 film of the same title, might not survive the transfer to Broadway. First staged to sold-out houses late last year at the Atlantic Theater Company, it exuded a shimmering transparency that might well have evaporated in less intimate quarters.

Yet “The Band’s Visit” — which follows the modest adventures of a touring Egyptian band stranded in an Israeli village significant only for its insignificance — more than holds its own on a larger stage. Its impeccably coordinated creative team has magnified and polished its assets to a high sheen that never feels synthetic.

This show was always close to perfect musically. (Mr. Yazbek’s quietly simmering score, which inflects Broadway balladry and character songs with a haunting Middle Eastern accent, felt as essential as oxygen.) But it felt a shade less persuasive in its connective spoken scenes.

That is, to say the least, no longer a problem. Though the lives it depicts are governed by a caution born of chronic disappointment, Mr. Cromer’s production now moves wire to wire with a thoroughbred’s confidence.

Such assurance is all the more impressive when you consider that “The Band’s Visit” is built on delicately balanced contradictions. It finds ecstasy in ennui; eroticism among people who rarely make physical contact; and a sense of profound eventfulness in a plot in which, all told, very little happens.

The story is sprung when the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Band, led by their straight-backed conductor, Tewfiq (Mr. Shalhoub), board a bus in 1996 for an engagement at the Arab Cultural Center in the city of Petah Tikva. Thanks to some understandable confusion at the ticket counter, they wind up instead in the flyblown backwater of Bet Hatikva.

They register as unmistakably alien figures there, looking like refugees from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in their powder-blue uniforms. (Sarah Laux did the costumes.) And there’s not a bus out of this godforsaken hole until the next morning.

Just how uninteresting is Bet Hatikva? Its residents are happy to tell you, in some of the wittiest songs ever written about being bored. The “B” that begins its name might as well stand for “basically bleak and beige and blah blah blah.”

Leading this civic inventory is a cafe proprietor named Dina (Ms. Lenk, in a star-making performance), a wry beauty who clearly doesn’t belong here and just as clearly will never leave. Like her fellow citizens, she sees the defining condition of her life as eternal waiting, a state in which you “keep looking off out into the distance/ Even though you know the view is never gonna change.”

Scott Pask’s revolving set, so fitting for a world in which life seems to spin in an endless circle, captures the sameness of the view. But Tyler Micoleau’s lighting, and the whispers of projections by Maya Ciarrocchi, evoke the subliminal changes of perspective stirred by the arrival of strangers.

Connections among the Egyptian and the Israeli characters are inevitably incomplete. To begin with, they don’t share a language and must communicate in broken English. And as the stranded musicians interact with their hosts, their shared story becomes a tally of sweet nothings, of regretful might-have-beens.

That means that the cultural collisions and consummations that you — and they — might anticipate don’t occur. Even the frictions that emerge from uninvited Arabs on Israeli soil flicker and die like damp matches.

The show is carefully veined with images of incompleteness: a forever unlit cigarette in the mouth of a violinist (George Abud); a clarinet concerto that has never been completed by its composer (Alok Tewari); a public telephone that never rings, guarded by a local (Adam Kantor) waiting for a call from his girlfriend; and a pickup line that’s dangled like an unbaited hook by the band’s aspiring Lothario (Ari’el Stachel, whose smooth jazz vocals dazzle in the style of his character’s idol, Chet Baker).

All the cast members — who also include a deeply affecting John Cariani, Kristen Sieh, Etai Benson and Andrew Polk — forge precisely individualized characters, lonely people who have all known loss, with everything and nothing in common. A marvelous Mr. Shalhoub (“Monk”) has only grown in the role of a man who carries his dignity and private grief with the stiffness of someone transporting perilously fragile cargo.

As for Ms. Lenk, seen on Broadway last season in Paula Vogel’s “Indecent,” she is the ideal avatar of this show’s paradoxical spirit, at once coolly evasive and warmly expansive, like the jasmine wind that Dina describes in the breakout ballad “Omar Sharif.”

Listening to Tewfiq sing in Arabic, she wonders, “Is he singing about wishing?” She goes on: “I don’t know what I feel, and I don’t know what I know/All I know is I feel something different.”

Mr. Yazbek’s melody matches the exquisitely uncertain certainty of the lyrics. That “something different” is the heart-clutching sensation that throbs throughout this miraculous show, as precise as it is elusive, and all the more poignant for being both.

The Band's Visit

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• Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore Like no fish-out-of-water film in recent memory, it leaves you with the hope that these fish will find their way back to water, and maybe learn to share that puddle before the desert dries it up entirely.
• Boston Globe Ty Burr It's a small, profoundly satisfying movie that keeps echoing long after it's over.
• Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves You can watch The Band's Visit for its political idealism, or you can watch it for entertainment value alone. In either case, it doesn't disappoint.
• Detroit News Tom Long You expect The Band's Visit to be a sweet little snapshot, a delightful and endearing culture-clash movie -- funny and poignant and human. And it is all those things. What's surprising is how it manages to be just a bit more.
• Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert A quiet, sympathetic film about the loneliness that surrounds us.
• ReelViews James Berardinelli A drama about isolation and communication, The Band's Visit is characterized both by strongly delineated characters and low-key comedy.
• AV Club Noel Murray Tonally, The Band's Visit steps gingerly on the line between 'sweetly humane' and 'cloyingly quirky,' but [director] Kolirin pulls back the reins just enough, maintaining control by expressing as much with his framing as with his script.
• Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey Every frame of this low-key delight is about foreignness.
• Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum Something marvelous happens as the filmmaker, in his first feature, expertly metes out small scenes of communication between people taught, for generations, to be wary of one another: This Band swings with the rhythms of hope.
• Film.com Jonathan F. Richards The Band's Visit has pathos, but it is also very funny.
• Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum Kolirin has a fine sense of where to place the camera and when to cut between shots for maximum comic effect.
• Seattle Times Moira MacDonald [Director] Kolirin wonderfully maintains an atmosphere of both humor and melancholy.
• Washington Post Ann Hornaday With luck, filmgoers who discover this gem about an Egyptian police band stranded in a small Israeli town will make it the must-see movie of the season.
• Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern This modest little fable from Israel, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, has spellbinding resonances, yet never breaks the spell by blowing its own horn.
• Slate Dana Stevens At moments, the movie is almost sentimental, but the performances save it every time.
• New York Press Eric Kohn Pretty, resonant and utterly approachable as a gentle comedy, The Band's Visit is conventionally low key.
• New Yorker Anthony Lane When in doubt, strike up the band.
• New York Magazine/Vulture David Edelstein The Band's Visit resounds with tenderness and melancholy.
• Observer Rex Reed The Band's Visit is a lovely first film from young Israeli director Eran Kolirin that offers a Middle Eastern inflection on the bittersweet stylings of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki.
• Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer Writer-director Eran Kolirin has a gentle touch, although the film is too self-consciously sentimental.

Take Plex everywhere

‘DEVO’ documentary a brisk visual ride through the band’s unique journey through pop music and culture

• Updated: Apr. 10, 2024, 4:44 p.m. |
• Published: Apr. 10, 2024, 6:00 a.m.

CIFF48 closes on Saturday with Chris Smith's documentary "Devo," playing in the Connor Palace at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 13. (Photo credit: Janet Macoska) Janet Macoska

• Malcolm X Abram, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The 48th International Cleveland Film Festival wraps up on Saturday and the whole shebang is bookended, more or less, by two films about famous music bands from Akron.

“This is A Film About The Black Keys” screened April 5, a prime spot on the first Friday night of the festival. At 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, another new documentary about an Akron band, surprisingly titled, simply “Devo” will close the festival.

Stories by Malcolm Abram

• Sleater-Kinney coming to Cleveland this summer: Where will they rock?
• Keyshia Cole coming to Cleveland this summer with a trio of R&B stars
• Aerosmith is getting back on the road, books new date in Cleveland
• Rock Hall inductee coming to Cleveland this summer: Where will he be “chooglin’?”

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Find Your Next Favorite Book, Movie, Band, and More with This New Media Recommendation Tool

Are you a bookworm? Film buff? Maybe a band groupie or an art lover? The Global Network of Discovery has it all.

By Marla Mackoul | Apr 10, 2024

In a world where doomscrolling Netflix until you can’t keep your eyes open is a common phenomenon, too much choice can feel like an enemy. Recommendations from friends and family can help sort through the never-ending maze of media out there, but sometimes they just don’t get your taste. Or maybe you’re looking for a new book to read and don’t want to broadcast your 50 favorite cheesy romance novels to the world to find one. Either way, there’s a new solution for you: the Global Network of Discovery.

The Global Network of Disovery (or Gnod, for short) is an AI-based project by Germany-based innovator Marek Gibney that, at its core, uses what other people think you might like. Over 300,000 people use Gnod every month, and those users fill out little boxes indicating their favorite authors, movies, bands, and artists. Over time, this teaches the AI what to recommend to people based on their current interests and how they overlap with what other people like. For instance, if you say your favorite authors are Oscar Wilde , Jane Austen , and Charles Dickens , Gnod recommends you check out Edith Wharton ; this is because other people who list Wilde, Austen, and/or Dickens also tend to list or confirm that they like Wharton. This “discover” feature can be used to find new artists, authors, movies, and musicians.

The real star of the show, though, is Gnod’s “tourist maps.” These maps are essentially visual representations of Gnod’s data for one specific musician , author , or movie . In a swirling circle of names, media most similar to what you’ve chosen will hover nearby; the farther away from the center you go, the less similar things get.

On the map for the movie Inception , for example, Shutter Island and Interstellar , similarly mind-boggling films, stick close. The Social Network and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , however, hang on the edges as only potential matches. The tourist maps are fun visual tools targeted at those moments when you want something that’s new (or at least new to you), but in the same vein as something you already know and like.

Gnod has thousands of artists and tens of thousands of musicians and authors in its database, and every user makes the network and its maps bigger and smarter. By finding your new obsession, you also help other people find theirs, both tailored to your specific tastes—it’s the ultimate recommendation win-win.

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After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl. After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl. After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl.

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• Trivia Angus Cloud 's final role before his passing in July 2023. Although production wasn't completed until months after his death due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Cloud still managed to film all of his scenes before production was shut down.

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LGBTQ South Asians are celebrating 'Monkey Man' for its representation of India's trans community

Fans are raving about Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” for its thrilling action sequences and poignant revenge storyline, but for LGBTQ South Asians, the film holds a particular significance.

The film features a transgender woman character, as well as India’s diverse third-gender, or “hijra,” community.

On his journey to get revenge on the corrupt guru and police chief who killed his mother, Patel’s character “Kid” is saved by Alpha, a transgender woman and hijra community leader. Other trans characters featured throughout the film eventually become allies to Kid, emerging in colorful saris and masks to fight alongside him during an epic battle scene.

“This is an anthem for the underdog, the voiceless, the marginalized,” Patel said in an interview with Variety. “I really wanted to include the hijra community, the third gender in India. … You look at the old carvings in these temples in India and the freedom, the sexuality, the philosophy, all of it, was so ahead of its time.”

Hijras have a long history in South Asia, including playing important roles in Hindu religious ceremonies, but in today’s India they’re often demonized and denied access to work and good housing. Reports on their representation in media have found that they’re usually portrayed as villains, victims or comic relief .

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Sakshi Venkatraman is a reporter for NBC Asian America.