A winner at the Tribeca film festival, this intelligent and intimate drama traces how a teenager’s relationship with her mother intensifies after she falls ill
This is a candid, sober, well-acted debut by the first-time director Ruthy Pribar which won her the Nora Ephron award at this year’s Tribeca film festival – an admirable choice, though it’s up for discussion as to how exactly it “embodies the spirit” of Ephron as the winner is supposed to.
The setting is Jerusalem where Asia (Alena Yiv) is a Russian Jewish incomer to Israel. She is in her mid-30s, working as a nurse and looking after her teenage daughter, Victoria, or Vika, whom she had very young – excellent work from Shira Haas. Vika has never had a boyfriend; as for Asia, she has a kind of friends-with-benefits relationship with a doctor, Stas (Gera Sandler), who for unexplained reasons connected with his own situation can’t take her back to his place.