Following up on his masterful, heart-wrenching war-drama Kippur, veteran Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï directs his first English language work based on a novel by Arthur Miller. Set in 1939, the film centers on Kalman, a young ambitious Jewish businessman who leaves his aged father in Europe to be with his sister, Sam (Samantha Morton), in Palestine. There he finds that Sam is living with Dov, an idealistic architect obsessed with the work of the Bauhaus school. Sam, in turn, is helping professor Oscar Kalkofsky, whose visionary ideas about the future Israeli state is one of collaboration with the Arabs already living in Palestine. Another member in this intellectual group is Silvia, who passionately argues for a separate state apart from the Arabs. When the war breaks out, illegal Jewish immigrants flood into Britain from Europe resulting in the formation of the Jewish Brigade by the British Army. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.
by Jonathan Crow
synopsis
