“Coexistence does not take place between the oppressor and the oppressed. It happens between two equals,” says political activist and comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi in his one-woman show “Coexistence, My Ass! “, which lends its name to Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares’ biographical documentary. Shot over the tumultuous five years between 2019 and 2024, “Coexistence, My Ass!” traces the activist-turned-comedian Eliassi’s rise in the comedy world as the Parallels the rise in tensions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories Because of settlement violence and the election of right-wing politicians to the government of Israel.
Throughout filmEliassi performs her one-woman show for an audience in a small Black Box theater. Unlike her early punchline-driven stand-up, the show takes a more long-form narrative form, a la “Hannah Gadsby: Nanette” or Jerrod Carmichael’s “Rothaniel.” Pares and her editor Rabab Haj Yahya add context to their stories by crossing from her live performance of the show to new footage they shot of Elassi with her family and friends in Israel, as well as archival footage from Eliassi’s childhood, her viral satirical Videos During Quarantine and appearances she made as a political correspondent on Israeli television.
Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, English and small Farsi, Elassi was raised by an Iranian-Jewish mother and Romanian-Jewish father, whom she calls the “progressive left”, in the Oasis of Peace (Neve Shalom/Wahatal-Salam), a planned community of Israelis and Palestinians whose goal was to prove coexistence could be achieved. The community’s hippie-tinged utopian ideals are broadcast loud and clear by the rainbow-colored arch with a rainbow-colored dove perched atop welcoming visitors to its grounds. As children, Eliassi and her Palestinian best friend Ranin met Hillary Clinton and Jane Fonda. As a teenager, Elassi went on a tour of Israel speaking about peace. After attending Brandeis on a full-ride scholarship for her activism, she took a job at the United Nations.
Described by her mother as a fun-loving, yet deeply serious child, Elassi soon found herself drawn to the world of stand-up comedy, questioning her choice to pursue comedy as a means of furthering her political career after watching Volodymyr Zelenskyy Pivot from Sitcoms to be elected president of Ukraine. After becoming the first Jewish performer at the Palestine Comedy Festival, she was invited by Harvard to work on a peace project. She chose to develop her one-woman show, “Coexistence, My Ass!” During this process, Fares began filming Eliassi, both on the Harvard campus and accompanying her on a comedy tour across the United States, which was halted in the early days of the pandemic. Back in Israel, Eliassi is recovering from Covid-19 at a luxury hotel called Hotel Corona, where contagious Palestinians and Israelis “radically” joined.
Over the next few years, Eliassi’s set evolved from topics like her body hair to more politically charged comedy, inspired by the anger she feels watching new stories like The Murder of eyad al-Hallaqthe autistic Palestinian shot by Israeli police on his way to school in East Jerusalem, the rise in settlement violence and forced deportations masquerading as drafts in the West Bank Several pending criminal charges.
As her profile rises, she begins to see the widening political divide online; She is either a traitor or a hero. Nothing in between. During protests following Netanyahu’s disputed election, Eliassi encounters many Israelis who worry that fascism threatens their democracy, but very few who agree that the occupation of Palestine is part of the same issue. An older man violently reprimands Noam for her views, calling her a provocateur. Not one to back down, she holds her ground as she replies, “Democracy and equality are not provocation.”
The film’s final coda takes a somber turn. After spending the past five years fending off questions about her singleness, Eliassi finally brings a man home to meet her parents – on October 6, 2023. The next day, everything shifts. Elassi describes all the people she knows who have been affected by the events, both Israeli and Palestinian. Disturbing texts fill the screen as she watches videos of the event online. “I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this,” she says. Later, after the bombing of Gaza begins, she gives a fiery speech, making it clear in her opinion that the country’s “racist, fascist government” was taking advantage of everyone’s collective grief to escalate the situation into the total annihilation of Gaza.
Here the documentary moves beyond Eliassi’s views on the subject. Unsure how to move forward in the name of peace, she talks to others in her community, including the son of an Israeli peace activist who died on October 7. She asks him if his mother would regret her work. He replies that “she did not work for peace so that when they come they will spare her. She worked so that there would be no reason for them to come. ” He adds that her death proves that she was right, and that “If we do not want to experience the tragedies of war, we must end warfare.”
Eliassi also checks in with her family and discovers that her jovial Aunt Zipi, who enjoyed making jokes about Palestinians in the past, now says she doesn’t want peace or “anything to do with them. ” Her mother shares a story about a friend who told her, “I can’t find empathy within me for the children being killed in Gaza.” In an earlier scene, Eliassi and Ranin were worried because they felt the whole country was losing its grip on humanity. Now Elassi, along with everyone else she talks to, can see exactly what this numbing has done to Palestinian life.
There is an abundance of material from Eliassi’s life during these forged years, and Prizes, Yahya, and co-writer Rachel Leah Jones struggle to balance these striking images with that of her one-woman show. The show that personally builds towards its devastating coda, isn’t really given the space to flow like it would if you saw it live. The cross-cutting editing detracts from the show’s rising tension as it swings from politically themed comedy to Eliassi’s devastatingly serious final monologue.
There are really two documentaries here, each made with a different approach. And while they are both hurtful fusions of the personal with the political, trying to fuse them together won’t quite work, they both undermine momentum. But “coexistence, my ass!” remains a compelling front row to a country on the brink of implosion, with Eliassi’s humor and insights serving as a melancholy elegance for a peace that, at least until real change soon, may not, may not ever arrived
Grade: B
“Coexistence, my ass!” premiere at 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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