SCREEN

BROKEN WINGS

Steve Bornfeld

No bombings, terrorists, military occupations or ancient animosities. Just a family wrestling with life, after death visits one of their own. Broken Wings, from filmmaker Nir Bergman, reveals an Israel never glimpsed on CNN. In simple strokes, Bergman paints a portrait of the Ullman family nine months after the father's demise. Widow Dafna (a haunted Zilbershatz-Banai) has returned to work as a hospital midwife, leaving her 17-year-old daughter, Maya (Maya Maron) as resentful surrogate mom to her three siblings. But when Maya forgets to pick up 6-year-old Bahr from his first day of school, it triggers a trauma that fractures the already fragile family. Bergman sets low-key, realistic characters in motion with pitch-perfect emotional honesty. The result is a deeply relatable movie of tender power.

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