It’s difficult to get excited about yet another film featuring youths running around a city with guns and drugs. And yet despite having all these elements, Ajami still manages to be completely original. No doubt its location plays a big part in it; Ajami is a mixed Christian and Muslim neighbourhood in Tel Aviv. Its story, split into five parts, explores a community that tries to remain civilised amidst the pressures of extreme civil unrest.

13 year-old Nasri (Fouad Habash) adores his older brother Omar (Shair Kabaha); their lives are turned upside down however when another family member, their uncle, gets involved with a clan member. His actions not only have repercussions on them, but on other members of their community.

Omar is dating Hadir (Ranin Karim), but as he’s also working for her father, and because the pair are of different faiths, they keep their relationship a secret.

Also working for Hadir’s father is Malek; a young Palestinian refugee who is working illegally in Israel in a bid to earn money to help pay for his mother’s costly medical bills for her illness.

Elsewhere is Binj (Scandar Copti), an affable Palestinian who likes to party and take drugs, looking for a brighter future with his Jewish girlfriend.

And then there’s Dando (Eran Naim), who’s a policeman trying to uncover what happened to his missing soldier brother.

They all co-exist – just. But with tensions running high, there’s no such thing as an average day in Ajami.

This impressive debut feature from Scandar Copti examines a neighbourhood truly in the thick of it. And yet his vision is one of pure humanity; it’s not really focusing on the many why’s and how’s of the troubled area, but on the base affects on its disparate community.

Not only is it Copti’s first directing gig, but he also uses an all amateur cast to tell his stories. He doesn’t make it any easier on himself (or his audience for that matter, initially at least) as he juggles five different story arcs and timelines. Somehow though, he pulls it off. It’s all a little too loose in places, but he still manages to give it a welcome coherency.

The fact that the film is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the imminent Oscars is testament to the huge achievement Copti has accomplished here.

The only real qualm is the hopelessness of it all; it’s about as bleak a picture as there can be, but with the area’s ongoing conflicts, as well as the fact that Copti grew up in Ajami, you can’t always expect happy endings – in life or on film.

With some terrific performances and a smart script, Ajami is the perfect calling card for the emerging talent that is Copti. What he’s produced here proves that even if your story is a familiar one, it’s how you tell it that really counts.