`The Barbecue People' is the first time an Israeli film has appeared in the Bermuda Film Festival. This fact, combined with the fact that director David Ofek himself is planning to attend the festival, means the film has a lot of momentum built up behind it.

Fortunately, it delivers.

At its most basic level, the film follows the same structure that is loosely followed by a "Seinfeld" episode. Beginning with five seemingly individual and independent stories, by the end the plots have all come together in a series of coincidences, misadventures and acts of fate with the result that the film really was just telling one complex story all along.

Of course with "Seinfeld" the result is a work of comedic genius. "The Barbecue People", on the other hand, is far from a comedy. Using this alternative point-of-view technique, however, Daivd Ofek and Yossi Madmony have managed to create a film which appears to be as much about Israel and the Israeli people as it is about one complex family who attend a barbecue.

Alternative point-of-view usually needs some sort of frame to hold the individuals' stories together, or the coherent whole falls apart. It is a barbecue which all the characters attend that provides the frame for these five stories, easily giving them coherence and providing the basis for structure throughout the chaos.

By specifically making this barbecue an Independence Day barbecue celebrating the 1947 declaration of Israel as a state, the film manages to also hold on to the theme of Israel itself and the journey towards a national identity as an underlying sixth story.

Complicated as it sounds, the series of close shaves between the characters, the swift pace of the stories, and the way the separate plots line up and fall into place makes for a truly captivating and highly recommended film.

"The Barbecue People" sets a high standard for future Israeli films to live up to in the Bermuda Film Festival.

Sarah Titterton