Under the Domim Tree movie storyline. The Israeli film follows the lives and struggles of several teenagers, focusing on Aviya, an Israeli sabra whose father was killed in 1939 in Israel and whose mother suffers from mental illness. The youths, most Holocaust survivors and all orphans, live in a communal farming village.
In the opening scene, set in the winter of 1953, a large group of adults and teenagers are shown searching for Misha, a young boy from the boarding house. He is eventually found drowned in a river. It quickly becomes apparent that he, along with Yurek and Ze’evik, had regularly run through the woods at night, a result of having hidden in the forest for two years during the Holocaust. Yurek and Ze’evik cease this behavior temporarily, to the relief of the headmasters and their peers, before resuming it several months later.
A new girl, Miriam “Mira” Segal, arrives at the boarding house in spring. She proves uncooperative with the living arrangements and is openly hostile at times, drawing ire from the other girls. Aviya still hopes that her mother, Henya, who has been institutionalized for years, will recover and regularly visits the hospital where Henya lives.
Henya believed she had been in Europe during the Holocaust even though she and her husband had left prior to the war. She later becomes romantically involved with Yurek, whose behavior she is concerned for but does not question. Both, along with Ze’evik, frequently take comfort in sitting under the domim (crab apple) tree near the boarding house.
Their lives seem to improve over the next few weeks, with a plan being made for the youths to plant hundreds of tulip bulbs around the domim tree and Yola, another girl at the home, finding out that her father is still alive in Warsaw. The entire community rejoices for Yola, with several girls helping her prepare for the trip to Poland and other children requesting that she deliver letters to relatives they believe may still be alive while there. However, tragedy strikes and Yola’s father dies suddenly before she can see him. Aviya receives a letter from an aunt containing a photograph of her father and the name of a cemetery. As a result, she is able to find and visit her father’s grave in Haifa.
Under the Domim Tree (Hebrew: עץ הדומים תפוס, translit. Etz Hadomim Tafus) is a 1994 Israeli film based on the 1992 book of the same name by Gila Almagor. The film was directed by Eli Cohen, and screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Both the book and the film are sequels to Almagor’s 1985 autobiographical book, Summer of Aviya, about the protagonist’s childhood in the 1950s in Israel.
Under the Domim Tree is a sequel to Summer of Aviya, both of which are adaptions of books written by Israeli actress Gila Almagor. Almagor drew from her childhood experiences when writing the books: her mother, after losing her entire family to the Holocaust and her husband to an Arab sniper, became mentally unstable and was institutionalized in 1954. She was subsequently sent to the Hadassim youth village where she lived among numerous Holocaust orphans. The character of Aviya is loosely based on Almagor, and her mother, Henya, is portrayed by Almagor herself in both films.
Under the Domim Tree (1996)
Directed by: Eli Cohen
Starring: Gila Almagor, Juliano Mer-Khamis, Uri Avrahami, Yael Pearl, Alexander Peleg, Ohad Shahar, Tali Atzmon, Shimon Lev-Ari, Rahel Dobson, Helen Eleazari
Screenplay by: Gila Almagor, Eyal Sher, Eli Cohen
Production Design by: Eitan Levi
Cinematography by: David Gurfinkel
Film Editing by: Danny Shick
Costume Design by: Rona Doron
Set Decoration by: Miguel Markin
Art Direction by: Eitan Levi
Music by: Beni Nagari
Distributed by: Curb Entertainment
Release Date: May 17, 1996
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