Sami had a fight with his mother about all kind of things and he talks about it with Niso, the family friend and his mother’s old suitor. Clara has a new love whom Sami does not like.

The House on Shlush Street

The film tells the story of a Sephardi family of Egyptian Jewish immigrants from Alexandria that settle in 1947 Tel Aviv. The family consists of a 33-year-old widowed wife, Clara, (played by Gila Almagor, one of the most prominent actresses in Israel for the last three decades) and her four children. They live in a working class neighborhood surrounded by their extended family, including Clara’s mother Mazal, Clara’s uncle Rafael, and Sultana, his wife. The plot centers on the firstborn, Sami, his transition from a shy 15- year-old to a working man and an activist in the “Irgun” (a resistance movement that acted mainly against the military forces of the British), and the romantic attachment he develops with a 25-year-old Russian immigrant librarian (Michal Bat Adam, now a director). In addition to this, Clara struggles between social pressure to take a husband and her own complex feelings surrounding this, complicated by another Sephardi Egyptian, played by Yosef Shiloach, who has strong feelings for her. The movie is a vivid and very credible description of the lives of Sephardi immigrant families on the eve of the declaration of the state of Israel, as well as the escalating violence between British forces and the local populace, as well as Palestinian Arab violence towards Jews.