Synopsis

50-year-old Bella has been working devotedly for the Bar family in the affluent Caesarea, in Israel, for almost 15 years now, and regularly sending money to her husband and two children in a poor village in Ukraine. Bella convinces herself that the only reason for the temporary affair she is having with Avraham, the Ethiopian security guard of the rich neighborhood, is to help her deal with her homesickness. Despite the geographical distance, Bella feels she is still connected to her family and involved in their lives. One day she discovers that her daughter is pregnant, and no one told her about it. Bella is hurt and disillusioned, she decides that it is time to leave everything and go back home to fight for her place in the family. Bella returns to her old life as a different person, searching to rediscover herself and to reunite her family. But slowly she realizes that for her, there is no way back home. When she left her home the first time, she had to tear herself from her family in order to provide them a better future. Now she decides to leave her home a second time, with a heavy heart, but with the realization that the "temporary" identity she had built herself back in Israel has become her sole identity.

Director's Statement

14 years after my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, she agreed to let into the house a worker. A bulldozer dug a deep cavern under the house, to build an underground room for the new housekeeper. Suddenly, there was another woman in the house; she'd be the housewife my mother couldn't be anymore. After meeting her, I became obsessed with exploring immigrant workers' stories around me and discovered a big group of women who've been living on a geographical seam. In my story, Bella returns to her home after years. It's the confrontation between past and present and how much we change from the person we were, becoming alienated with the place and people we used to call home. People like Bella have been sacrificing everything they have, to build a future that, in the end, might not belong to her. The gap between the woman Bella was when she left and the woman she is today is the story I want to tell. This gap, in some way, is also the gap within which I live. Caught between the patriarchal conventions I grew up with and the modern liberated woman I am trying to be.