Wine is poured generously at the long, celebratory marriage feast in the remote Palestinian village that is the setting for Wedding in Galilee.
But the big question for the guests is whether Molotov cocktails will be served with the shish kebab.
In Michel Khleifi's movie - a work as extraordinary as it is timely - the guest list includes a party of Israeli soldiers from the occupying forces on the West Bank and the deeply embittered Palestinians who become their reluctant hosts.
It is, of course, a volatile and explosive mixture, and one that threatens to detonate at any time. And, in a refreshing departure, the story is told
from an Arab perspective, because Khleifi is a Palestinian.
But anyone going to Wedding in Galilee, which opens today at the Roxy Screening Rooms, in the expectation of a shrill polemic will be disappointed.
There are virulent emotions in Khleifi's piece, but it is elevated by the universal truths he finds in the predicament of the characters on both sides, and the warmth and compassion with which he discusses them.
Wedding in Galilee unites two families in the village with its nuptials, but it is, of course, a film about divisions - divisions so wide and so longstanding that nothing can span them.
The film is a deft contrast of two sorts of tension. The first - and most obvious - is the hostility between the Israeli troops and the villagers. Secondly - and it's very much the heart of the film - there are the more mundane tensions that spring from the difficulties and frictions of family life.
In Wedding in Galilee, which is in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles, the enmity of Arabs and Jews gives way to the more ancient war between the generations. In his first feature, Khleifi shows a veteran's touch and insight.
His movie begins on an empty note of harmony in a remote Palestinian village, which the Israeli authorities regard as extremist because of violent demonstrations and bloodshed that had occurred there four months earlier.
Abu Adel, the mukhtar or head man of the village, visits the Israeli military governor to seek permission to hold the wedding feast for the marriage of his son Adel.
The permit is necessary because the villagers have an extremist reputation and live under a sunset-to- sunrise curfew rigidly enforced by the Israelis.
