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The recent Academy Award nomination for Ajami marks the third time in as many years that Israel has scored an Oscar nod for best foreign language film. It’s a major achievement for a country with such a tiny film industry whose main language, Hebrew, and conflict-laced themes offer challenging appeal for most global audiences.

Yet much like 2008 nominee Beaufort and last year’s Waltz with Bashir, Ajami is anchored around the exact elements – war, religion, terror – that have traditionally marred Israel’s international profile.

“This film is about identity and essential human battles, which speak to everyone,” says Yaron Shani, an Israeli-Jew who co-directed Ajami with Israeli-Arab Scandar Copti. “Ajami tells the story of many societies where disparate ethnic groups live side by side.”

The groups in Ajami are as disparate as the Middle East itself: Christians and Muslims, Bedouins and Jews, Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians, thugs and heroes. Each inhabits its own slice of Ajami, both the film and its physical namesake – an historic district in ancient Jaffa, the Biblical town just south of Tel Aviv from which Jonah set sail after that legendary whale.

Ajami‘s class conflicts and economic struggles offer a far more quotidian view of Israeli existence than Beaufort or Waltz with Bashir. Still, with its drug shoot-outs and turf battles, police brutality and military occupation, the film is hardly the “heroic” Israel of kibbutzniks or hi-techers. Nor is Ajami necessarily the idealised Israel of Brand Israel, a half decade-long effort by the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to re-brand the nation which ranked a dismal 192 on last year’s East West Global Index 200.

Developed in conjunction with advertising firm Young & Rubicam, the Brand Israel team recently debuted a long-awaited national image-upgrade scheme. Announced the day after Ajami‘s Oscar nomination, Brand Israel intends to promote the country via six core lenses: the environment, ethnic heritage, hi-tech, lifestyle/leisure, international aid (such as Israel’s recent relief efforts in Haiti) and cultural/creative endeavours as exemplified by films such as Ajami.

For a government-sponsored initiative, Brand Israel’s developers are surprisingly realistic about their abilities to transcend the media messages proffered by the likes of CNN, Al Jazeera and the BBC. Indeed, much like Israel’s creative community, the Brand Israel team accepts that war and conflict remain inextricably linked to the nation’s global image. 

But rather than manipulate that image, the goal is to manage it instead. Along the way, Brand Israel hopes to maintain a sense of cultural authenticity while subtly reshaping the nation’s identity. “We cannot shy away from the conflict, it’s a core part of Israel’s brand DNA,” explains the MFA’s Ido Aharoni. “But we must broaden the scope of this conversation,” he adds, “and begin showing Israel as human faces and not just soldiers’ faces.”

As Ajami’s directors await the Academy Awards on 7 March and Brand Israel’s planners plot their next move, the nation is eager to see whether this third nomination will finally bring an Oscar home. Whatever the outcome, it remains debatable whether any international accolade can truly help Israel overcome its own heavy history.

“The truth is that Israel is a gritty place – as much like a sunny slice of southern California as it is Baghdad,” observes branding consultant Martin Kace, whose New York-based Empax group has worked on a number of Israel-related marketing initiatives. “So you must own these truths,” Kace adds, “because, ultimately, they will always be revealed.”

David Kaufman is a New York based writer