Valley

Migdal Ha-Emek is one of those towns that, if you have any great ambitions, you move away from. In this movie we meet a high-school girl who wants to be an actress and travels from Migdal Ha-Emek to the big city for an audition. But that's a subplot. Mostly we have a newly arrived classmate who comes from a cultured background, reads books and so on, but finds no one similar to be his companion. The alpha male of the class is a troubled kid from a broken home, and the question is which of the two boys will more greatly influence the other.

They tell me the Israeli schoolrooms are pretty chaotic, with the teachers suffering a lot of backtalk. I didn't go to school in Israel, so I'm not sure how exaggerated the undisciplined classroom atmosphere is, but I'm sure it reflects a grain of truth. The young actors are believable, the older actors include a couple of Israel's best, and the story holds attention although it's not exactly merry all the way.