AllMovie

Natalie Portman makes her directorial debut with this adaptation of Israeli novelist Amos Oz's memoir about his bittersweet childhood and his parents' relationship. Young Amos (Amir Tessler) vows never to become a writer like his grim father (Gilad Kahana), and instead has great sympathy for his romantic, literature-loving mother Fania (Portman), whom he understands has married beneath her station. Her stories about her life in Poland before her marriage, and her dashed dreams about a lover more suited to her delicate nature, are told against the backdrop of Jerusalem's liberation from British rule.