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Under The Domim Tree

1995, Movie, NR, 102 mins

UNDER THE DOMIM TREE | ETZ HADOMIM TAFUS
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A sweetly romantic teen film about the Holocaust? Well, yes, and not a bad one. Based on the autobiographical novel by Israeli actress Gila Almagor -- the sequel to her 1987 book The Summer of Aviya, also filmed by Eli Cohen -- it follows a group of Polish-Jewish adolescents relocated to an Israeli youth village in 1953. Aviya's mother (played by Almagor, who also coproduced and cowrote the screenplay) is in an asylum, and most of her friends are war orphans. Together they fall in love, bicker, study, try to track down the remnants of their scattered families and forget the war that haunts their dreams. The kibbutz's domim (crab apple) tree is where they go to sit when it's all too much. Sentimental, to be sure, but touchingly acted and a welcome antidote to the epic grandiosity of SCHINDLER'S LIST. leave a comment
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