Kordania (1984)

Overview

Cordonia, 1950. This all but abandoned migrant camp is home to its last two remaining families: one Iraqi and the other, Polish. The Bassris came to Israel from a very wealthy background. At the age of 15, matriarch Marcelle married a man whom she has since come to despise. Marcelle passes this deep-seated hatred onto her children; her eldest son who, on arrival in Israel was whisked off to a kibbutz as part of a youth immigrant organisation, and 12-year-old, teenage girl. Alongside the hate, she is also fostering false hope for this great, imminent change in her life that will come with the help of her brother, Ezra, a successful Jewish Agency envoy. The other family hails from Poland and moved to Israel for ideological reasons. The mother, a trained teacher, tries to breathe life into the "impossible", but she, too, in times of crisis and despair, finds herself doubting the "Zionist truth".