Sea and Land

Anna, an unmarried, introverted woman in her 40s, is mourning her mother Claudia and looking back at her own wasted life in her mother`s shadow. The two women are a study in contrasts. Claudia was pretty, coquettish and glamorous while Anna, a sad and lonely little girl, turned into a drab, unfulfilled woman devoting all of her energy to work. Now surrounded by old photos, cheap jewelry and memory-filled objects, she tries to trace the colorful, elusive figure of her mother and analyze their relationship. Claudia was born to Russian parents who escaped the pogroms by migrating to Egypt, where they prospered in business. She grew up as a pampered princess, but the good life couldn`t last forever, and after the business failed, the now penniless family moved to Israel. Claudia married a handsome sailor but never got used to life in Israel, and even after her husband’s death in an accident she insisted on keeping up a faחade of false glamor, flirting with whoever happened along.

Gradually and with great finesse, the relationship between mother and daughter is revealed, each tightly bound to the other although they belonged to different worlds. And like a detective on a case, Anna tries to work out the meaning of painful past events on her way to separation and closure.