The Israeli Film Festival runs Monday through Thursday, April 3 through 6, at Columbia College Ludington Bldg., 1104 S. Wabash. Admission is free, all works will be shown by video projection, and each screening includes a 6:30 reception and a lecture. For more information call 312-673-2350.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Written and directed by Arik Kaplun, a Russian emigre to Israel, this overly contrived and broadly comic 1999 feature focuses on a group of immigrants in a Tel Aviv neighborhood during the gulf war. Kaplun’s wife, Evlyn, plays the title character, left pregnant and in debt when her husband absconds to Russia with their immigration grant money; a melancholy blond with a heart-melting smile, she arouses the protective (and other) instincts of Eli, a womanizing neighbor. Her story is intercut and gradually connected with that of another newly arrived couple, vulgar strivers who exploit their wheelchair-bound war-hero grandfather by parking him, hat in hand, next to a street musician. Yana and Eli’s response to gas masks and sealed rooms may inspire a few laughs, but this sex-and-death territory has been covered better in other films. In Hebrew and Russian with subtitles. 90 min. (Alissa Simon) a 7 PM
Tuesday 4
Subtitled “A Journey Log,” this is the first episode of an Israeli TV documentary on settlements in the West Bank. Chaim Yavin directed. In Hebrew with subtitles. a 7 PM
