The House on Chelouche Street
6.8 /10 1 Votes
Director Moshe Mizrahi Music director Dov Seltzer Country Israel | 6.6/10 IMDb Genre Drama Duration Language Hebrew and Ladino | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 1973 (1973) Writer Rachel Fabien, Yerech Guber, Moshe Mizrahi Screenplay Moshe Mizrahi, Yerech Guber Cast Ofer Shalhin (Sami), Gila Almagor (Clara), Joseph Shiloach (Nissim), Michal Bat-Adam (Sonia), Shaike Ophir (Grossman), Etti Grotes Similar movies Movies about widows, Other similar movies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In 1947, after the death of her husband, Clara (Gila Almagor) and her Egyptian family settle into a crowded one-room apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. Her son, Sami (Ophir Shalhin), is bright and has a fondness for reading, but is so upset over his mother working as a maid that he drops put of school to find factory work and help support the family. He soon finds himself swept up in a strike and embraces his newfound role as an activist, even though it could mean arrest by British police.
Contents
The House on Chelouche Street is a 1973 film by Israeli director Moshe Mizrahi, filmed in Hebrew, Egyptian Arabic, and Judeo-Spanish (a Jewish oriented dialect of Spanish). The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
A fatherless family immigrates to Israel from Egypt during the British Mandate period. The film traces the hardships the family suffers in the politically unstable country.
Plot
The film tells the story of a Sephardi family of Egyptian Jewish immigrants from Alexandria that settle in 1947 Tel Aviv. The family consists of a 33-year-old widowed wife, Clara, (played by Gila Almagor, one of the most prominent actresses in Israel for the last three decades) and her four children. They live in a working-class neighborhood surrounded by their extended family, including Claras mother Mazal, Claras uncle Rafael, and Sultana, his wife. The plot centers on the firstborn, Sami, his transition from a shy 15-year-old to a working man and an activist in the "Irgun" (a resistance movement that acted mainly against the military forces of the British), and the romantic attachment he develops with a 25-year-old Russian immigrant librarian (Michal Bat Adam, now a director). In addition to this, Clara struggles between social pressure to take a husband and her own complex feelings surrounding this, complicated by another Sephardi Egyptian, played by Yosef Shiloach, who has strong feelings for her. The movie is a vivid and very credible description of the lives of Sephardi immigrant families on the eve of the declaration of the state of Israel, as well as the escalating violence between British forces and the local populace, as well as Palestinian Arab violence towards Jews.
Cast
References
The House on Chelouche Street WikipediaThe House on Chelouche Street IMDb The House on Chelouche Street themoviedb.org