Turn Left at the End of the World (Israel 2004, 130 min, dir: Avi Nesher, cast: Neta Garty, Liraz Charchi, Aure Atika).

When Helen Thomas, the longest running White House journalist ever, told the Israelis that it was time to leave Palestine and go back to Poland:nobody protested they weren’t from Poland. Instead they labeled her an Alzheimered anti-Semite and force her to quit. Too bad. Nothing important ever happens at White House press briefings, and at least the room looked fuller with her in the front row.

But once again the Israelis lost a public relations opportunity. If they were cool they would have sent Helen a DVD of Turn Left at the End of the World. We all know the story of the Holocaust survivors finding refuge in Israel, but who knows about Moroccans and Indians? Nobody every said to the Jews, “Go back to India.” And yet many India Jews are descended form the lost tribe of Manasseh, conquered by the Assyrians back in BC days and not taking any messages for the next 2000 years.

In the 1960s Israel was the refuge and hope for Jews from all over the world. Avi Nesher focuses his film on a tiny outpost at the edge of the Negev desert where the government shunted new arrivals. When we arrive the small kibbutz has already been inhabited by Moroccans and is receiving new families from India. They are all immigrants, all Jews. But as everyone knows, put two Jews in a room and you have an argument.

The Moroccans see themselves as French, and the Indians are more British than the British. They bristle at working on the production line in the bottle plant (the one industry), and form a cricket team. The Moroccans, being French, strike the plant and complain about how they are underpaid. The Moroccans speak French, the Indians speak English, and nobody speaks Hebrew very well.

Avi Nesher makes this small, remote settlement a paradigm for the confusion and vitality of this new country. A big part of the vitality is sex. Aure Atika, the very sexy French actress (Movie with Me: The Beat My Heart Skipped) is the Moroccan widow who starts an affair with the Indian father of her daughter (Nicole’s) new friend. Meanwhile Nicole seduces the local schoolteacher, Asaf. (see the clip).

The movie advances with several stories, like a good novel. The characters slowly learn Hebrew and understand they have left their identities and cultures somewhere beyond the desert. The only thing important now is what they are becoming: Israelis. The future is everything and, if they can only settle the strike at the bottle plant, it is very hopeful.

Maybe the Israelis should see Turn Left at the End of the World along with Helen Thomas. It is about the quilting of a new nation. Today that tapestry seems threadbare.