’s new movie, , which opened throughout Israel on Thursday, is a flawed but touching drama about a Tel Aviv single mother and her young daughter. It captures the isolation of this small family and the yearning of both its members for community and acceptance. Bat-Adam, one of Israel’s most acclaimed actresses, is best known for a number of films she made with her husband, Moshe Mizrahi, notably (made in 1972 and set in at the beginning of the 20th century) and (1973), both of which are available to stream on the Israel Film Archive website.
After her success in front of the camera, she turned her hand to writing and directing, with decidedly mixed results. , which is very watchable in spite of its occasional and distracting descents into pretension, is certainly one of her best movies. Hila (Jade Daiches Weeks) is an extreme version of a lot of in that she has never told her child’s father about her and the two of them are on their own.
She met Shaul (Yaakov Zada-Daniel), a famous writer, when he was interviewed on a television show where she worked. They immediately fell for each other, or so she thought, but it turned out that while she felt he was her great love, for him she was just a fling, one that he was happy to abandon as soon as his wife and daughter came back from a trip. Soon, he moved abroad with them, not knowing that Hila was pregnant.
Fast forward about eight years: She is a documentary-film director who is so successful that she can afford a two-bedroom.
