Director: Dan Wolman / Based on the novel by Shulamit Lapid / Israel 2010
Genre: Fiction
Category: Feature Film
Production: for IBA1, Channel One, Israel.
Cast: Tamar Alkan, Zion Ashkenazi, Ya’akov Bodo, Levana Finkelstein.
Language: Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic
Subtitles: English / French
Length: 105 minutes
The story of “Gei Oni” is an historical epic which interweaves the story of the
first wave of Jewish European migration to Palestine, at the end of the 19th century, with
an unusual love story between Fania, a young Russian immigrant, and Yechiel, a native
Jew.
Seventeen-year-old Fania, her baby daughter, her elderly uncle, and her emotionally
impaired brother arrive at the port of Jaffa, having survived a pogrom in which all other
members of their family were killed. Having no real choice, Fania marries Yechiel, a
widower whose wife died of malaria, leaving him to care for their two children himself.
The two set out to a small settlement near Safed, where Yechiel and a few other daring
settlers are trying to cultivate the barren lands which they bought from local Arabs. Fania
is burdened by a harrowing secret she is unable to share with anyone else. but unless
her husband Yechiel shares her secret, their marriage cannot be consummated.