Israel could be one of the hardest places in the world to be a filmmaker. There is a finite audience for your work. There are only so many people in the world who speak Hebrew. You have to struggle with security issues that become line items in budgets that movie producers in other parts of the world never even consider. Yet for Eytan Fox, it is one of the richest places from which to draw the stories that become his films. Fox, since making his first film, "Song of the Siren" ("Shirat HaSirena") back in 1994, has become one of Israel’s most well respected filmmakers. In his newest film, "The Bubble" ("Ha’Buah"), which opens today in New York City, he weaves a story that asks tough questions about Israel’s very essence.

I had a chance nearly a decade ago to drive to Philadelphia with Fox, where he was being given an award at the Wolgin Jewish Film Festival as "most promising newcomer in Israeli cinema." Our conversation was largely focused on the state of Israeli cinema, prospects for a young film director, Israel’s wavering support for new film projects, and what it was like for an American-born young man whose parents made aliyah when he was a toddler to adapt in society. I remembered Fox as articulate, committed to Israel, struggling with Israeli politics (I have yet to meet an Israeli who does not struggle with politics), and unswerving in his desire to be a successful filmmaker in Israel. He talked about what it was like to be an outcast in Israel, when his Israeli classmates would poke fun at him because his parents spoke Hebrew with an American accent. We also talked about his first film, built largely around a female protagonist.

"Song of the Siren" was adapted from Irit Linur’s novel, centered around a woman who has trouble finding a foundation in her life while the country around her goes topsy-turvy. Set at the onset of and during the first Gulf war, everyone is preparing their "safe rooms," readying their gas masks, and preparing to flee Tel Aviv. That is, everyone but Talila. I loved "Song of the Siren," and so did the committee that chose to present Fox with his award that summer.

Many in Israel questioned whether a man could be sufficiently sensitive to the plight of a single woman searching for a meaningful relationship in a country under daily attack. Sensitivity is the last thing that anyone would question after watching Fox’s newest film. He is one of the most insightful movie-makers I have seen, and his treatment of each of the protagonists in his new film is as much tender and warm as it is complex. In 1997, Fox directed the first season of the award-winning Israeli television series "Florentine," about a group of 20-somethings interacting in the heart of Tel Aviv. The series struggled with the aspirations of this new generation, fresh from doing their national army service, trying to sort out life, relationships, parents, and the workplace. Each weekly episode was enthusiastically followed by all of Israel. Then Fox made the controversial "Yossi and Jagger" in 2000 about two gay men in the Israel Defense Forces and "Walk on Water" in 2004 about a Mossad agent who wearies of his job as assassin, only to be asked to track down an 80-year-old former Nazi in Germany. The latter film was extremely successful here, and was one of the few Israeli films ever to be shown on pay cable channels.

"The Bubble" is not for everyone. It asks hard questions and shows events and developments that we may not wish to confront. It pushes the envelope with hard-hitting and somewhat graphic heterosexual and homosexual sexuality. Three young Israelis, two men and a woman, share an apartment in one of the hippest neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, not unlike the one showcased in "Florentine." As the film begins, you sense that it’s "Three’s Company" all over again. But that’s not the case. The film proceeds to develop the lives of each as they go in and out of relationships and as they deal with each other and try to provide comfort in the "bubble" that they create for each other. Much the way Talila went about her life as Scuds dropped around her, the threesome is possibly naïve when Palestinian Ashraf, Noam’s partner, comes to Tel Aviv to live with them. Inside the "bubble" each protects the other, but outside is a world where terrorists cross into Israel’s cities and where Palestinians wait in long lines at checkposts. Somehow, the now-foursome feel that they can make a difference.

Ashraf and Noam grew up in the neighboring villages of Jerusalem’s French Hill and Isawiya, which shared a playground where Jew and Arab children played together in the sandbox; that is no longer the case. Fox’s mother, a long-time resident of French Hill, was active in trying to build bridges between the two communities. Fox asks whether Jew and Arab can ever coexist, a question that becomes one of the underlying contexts of the film. The film is a tribute by a son to his mother.

Starring are Daniela Wircer, a bright-eyed attractive young newcomer who adds pizzazz as Lulu; Ohad Knoller and Alon Friedmann as Noam and Yali, both of whom exude an Israeli warmth that begs you to invite them home for dinner; and Yousef "Joe" Sweid, an Arab-Israeli actor who has become an Israeli TV soap opera sensation and who does a fine job as Ashraf. Co-writing the film with Fox is Gal Uchovsky, a weekly columnist with Time Out: Tel Aviv and a gay rights activist.

In "The Bubble," Eytan Fox uses the interactions of people who truly come to love each other as metaphors for a world that has gone a bit crazy. As you can be sure when you screen an Eytan Fox film, the picture is very well made, sensitive, and potent. The movie is well-structured and politically-charged, but balanced. But know going in that Fox does not hold back in graphically showing the love and warmth of his characters.