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Director Dina Zvi-Riklis’s film is a big screen adaptation of Rachel Eytan’s 1962 bestseller of the same title that won her the Brenner Prize. In 1944, the latter days of British Mandatory rule of Palestine, 13-year-old Maya arrives at an orphanage/shelter. And whilst not an orphan per se, her mother did abandon her for a new life in the US whilst her father, who has since remarried, can no longer raise her. Dr. Markowski, an old friend of Maya’s father’s who runs the place, welcomes her to the shelter. Unbeknownst to Maya, Markowski had had an affair with her mother years ago and is now starting to wonder whether he might be her real father.
As Maya tries to adjust to life in the shelter, we become acquainted with the other shelter lodgers and staff’s backstories: the abandoned girls, the resistance member, the kibbutz-born volunteer, the cook who claims she used to be Warsaw’s nightlife queen, the cleaner who ran away from a religious home to start a relationship with a British officer, and so on.
The orphanage/shelter serves as an anchor and haven in the midst of the then-tumultuous reality towards the end of World War II, and on the cusp of the end of British Mandatory rule and the establishing of the State of Israel.
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All rights are reserved to the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) and the rights holders of the works. Any use of works on the website for non-individual and non-personal purposes is strictly prohibited without prior, written permission.
For more information about the rights holders, please visit the relevant collection page, or contact the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) offices.
We have the utmost respect for all rights holders’ copyright and put great efforts to track down any and all intellectual property owners for the purpose of seeking and obtaining permission to use their materials featured on the website.
Any and all materials are used in accordance with clause 27a of the 2007 Copyright Act. If you believe that your rights as intellectual property and copyright owners of any material featured on this website have been compromised, then you may contact the Israeli Film Archive via email with a cease-and-desist notice, requesting that the material in alleged copyright infringement no longer be used. When contacting the archive, please state the merit to your copyright ownership claim, as well as your full name, email address, and telephone number, with a link to the relevant webpage.
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