Presented by Israeli Center of Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco

Directed by Hagar Ben Asher

Starring: Hagar Ben Asher, Ishay Golan, Stav Yanai, Daria Forman

Quiet surfaces belie chaotic passions below in this subtle, absorbing drama about a single mother with a delicate network of lovers in her quiet rural community. When not selling eggs or looking after her two girls, free spirit Tamar (played with an understated intensity by director-screenwriter Hagar Ben Asher) eagerly serves the carnal needs of several local men, her efforts rendered in frank scenes free of the usual airbrushed treatment of sex on screen. A gentle and smitten veterinarian (Ishai Golan) threatens this tacitly harmonious arrangement when he convinces Tamar to form a household with him. But even as her daughters compete for their surrogate father’s attention, Tamar grows increasingly remote. Populating the screen with as many animals as people, and injecting an ambient soundtrack that lends visceral tension to the sultry air, Ben Asher’s mature directorial feature debut probes the collective dimensions of private sexuality while limning the fraught, porous border separating a tenuous social order from nature’s unruly passions.

Film Note Writer: Robert Avila