Film: Turn Left At The End of The World by Avi Nesher

              




Avi Nesher's Israeli-blockbuster-film "Sof HaOlam Smola" (2004) (which has also screened in France as "Au Bout Du Monde A Gauche" and is now touring U.S. Jewish Film festivals as "Turn Left At The End of the World" is an extraordinary film.

It is set in a Negev Desert Development Town in 1968, where immigrants from Morocco from the 50s find new immigrants from India arriving to live across the road from them.

The story is full of quirky and comic and neurotic characters, trying to navigate the unplanned-for frustrations, setbacks, temptations, insecurities and culture shock attendant upon the life of immigrants in a remote place, and speaking in Hindi, English, Arabic, French and Hebrew.

There are many interwoven stories in the film, but it pivots around two 17-year-old girls and their parents. One is Sarah, from India, played by Liraz Charchi, who on her first day in town meets Nicole, from a Moroccan family, played in an amazing performance by Neta Gerti. (This was their first feature film for each actress). They are tempermentally and culturely very different, but are drawn to each other. It is their stormy friendship, and their coming of age story, which is the central narrative. Very highly recommended. See Sof HaOlam Smola.

I was fortunate to see this with Director and Co-Writer Nesher discussing the film after it was shown. Nesher has produced and directed in Hollywood and in Israel many times, and spent some of his teenage years as an Israeli immigrant in New York City. While conceptualizing the film, he met with nearly 800 people who had lived in these Negev development towns to research the story, and then shot the film in a very tense 8-week period as the American-led War in Iraq began in March and April 2003, unsure if their set outside the town of Dimona would be the target of Iraqi Scud missiles. His cast of actors came from France and India as well as Israel.

Negotiations are underway with American Distributors and this may get to release to general Art Movie Houses in the future.