Starring Hiam Abbass. In Hebrew, Arabic, English, and French with English subtitles. Rated G. Opens Friday, May 1, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Although the metaphors drop like ripe you-know-whats in this parable about uneasy neighbours, the latest effort from Israeli writer-director Eran Riklis is full of quiet surprises. Lemon Tree stars handsome Hiam Abbass—who played the elder sister in Riklis’s The Syrian Bride and an illegal alien’s mother in The Visitor—as Salma Zidane, a middle-aged Palestinian widow whose tranquil habits—and essential boredom—are interrupted when the Israeli defence minister moves in across the street from her West Bank property.

The politician, rather conveniently named Israel (Doron Tavory), doesn’t care much either way, but his security detail decides that Salma’s lemon grove should be razed because there could be a terrorist behind every tree. His wife (Rona Lipaz-Michael) is troubled by the whole thing but doesn’t know what to do about it. Coincidentally, both women have grown children in the U.S.

Salma, who speaks no Hebrew, takes the unusual step of suing the Israeli government to halt the smashing of her family’s land. She looks for support from local patriarchs, but they seem more concerned that she’s spending too much time with the young lawyer (Paradise Now’s Ali Suliman) who finally takes interest in her case and, truth be told, in her.

Based on a real case, the legal proceedings here offer momentum to the beautifully shot story, which has a suitably ambivalent conclusion. But the screenplay, written by Riklis with Palestinian Suha Arraf, gets subtler and more complicated as it moves forward. Eventually, you realize that Lemon Tree is less about borders and laws than about those too-silent souls who bear life and dare to nurture it beneath the watchtower.