מרים ברנשטיין-כהן

A film adaptation of Yoram Kaniuk’s book. An Israeli artist leaves his wife and daughter in New York and returns to Israel after years of absence. He seeks to decipher the meaning of his sense of failure as a person, as a family man, as an artist. His best friends died in the war, his paintings were burned, he abandoned his family. He decides to make a film about himself, his parents, Tel Aviv, about everything that is contained in the puzzle called human life – but in the end he burns his work.

A Tel Aviv taxi breaks down, and while the driver attempts to repair it, the passengers take shelter and relate tales to each other. One man relates how he became a hero, in a comic fashion, while on Army maneuvers; an elderly woman tells of her first visit to the big city; another woman tells how she and her husband invited his boss and his wife to their home for dinner, with the intent of getting the husband a raise, and they wound up in a hospital thinking they had food poisoning. Another story concerns how the police caught a demented-thief who stole from a bank to give money to the poor.