Israeli Jews and Bedouin Arabs might be at odds in Danny Vereté’s film, but it’s the women in both cultures who get the worst of it. Set in the Judean desert, the yellow asphalt of the title, the film takes place largely in Paul Bowles territory, a frontier region between the Western mind and its collective id as embodied by alien, ancient, and mysterious tribal primitives. Once the essential ethnocentrism of the premise is accepted, what follows is a chilling, starkly photographed, often brutally ironic look at patriarchal tyranny.

In "Black Spot," Israelis in a semi-trailer run down a Bedouin boy. The settlement of the blood debt with the tribe leaves the weeping mother unconsoled. In "Here Is Not There," a Bedouin woman has blue eyes behind her veil. She’s a German who has married a tribesman and is now trying to escape with her two daughters; the story ends with a sinister twist. In "Red Roofs," a married Israeli farmer has an affair with his married Bedouin housekeeper, and things end badly indeed. Made before the current ongoing catastrophe in the region, Yellow Asphalt suggests that such breakdowns are not specific to any culture but endemic to the worst impulses of human nature. In Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles. (87 minutes)