Mati Atlas

A beautifully affecting love story that has rightly earned comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, Haim Tabakman's potent yet impeccably restrained tale has won awards and accolades at film festivals the world over. Aaron, a pillar in Jerusalem's Orthodox community is respected by friends and family. However, when he hires handsome runaway student Ezri to assist with his business, sexual tensions bristle and the pair cautiously embark on a love affair. Meanwhile, a neighbouring shopkeeper persists in seeing a man of her own choosing, even though she's been promised by her father to another. As forbidden truths come to the fore, these lovers are forced to either confront or relent in the face of a centuries-old religious community, with startling results.

Noa (Achinoam Nini), a popular Israeli singer of Yemenite descent, prepares for a concert in Jerusalem. She is interrupted by an old Arab man who claims to have been a close friend her great grandmother. He tells her about Mazal, a Jewish child-bride (Hadar Ozeri) from Yemen, who preserves her religion, culture, family and her unique art, surviving the harsh, violent conditions of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. She becomes the mother of two, a young widow (Galit Giat), and the family's breadwinner through her skills as a jeweler in gold and silver. In time, a woman of property (Timna Brauer) and an ardent patriot, she prevails through the unfolding bloody decades while living in the Old City of Jerusalem. She heads a family of extraordinary, unforgettable characters and grows old in strength and determination, remaining true to her traditions and ideals.