The House on Chelouche Street

The House on Chelouche Street
The House on Chelouche Street
Directed by	Moshe Mizrahi
Starring	Gila Almagor
Release date	1973
Running time	110 minutes
Country	Template:Film Israel
Languages	Hebrew and Ladino

The House on Chelouche Street is a 1973 film by veteran Israeli director Moshe Mizrahi, filmed in Hebrew, Egyptian Arabic, and Judeo-Spanish (a Jewish oriented dialect of Spanish). The film was nominated for the USA Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Plot

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 thei 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 "Haganah" (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. 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.