Songs for the Brokenhearted

With a broken marriage and a stalled doctoral thesis, Zohara has been drifting around Thailand when she is called home to Israel for her mother’s funeral. In the aftermath, she sublimates her grief by cleaning out her mother’s house. This leads her to uncover many of her parents’ stories and secrets. Her parents had arrived in Israel as part of a large Yemeni contingent in 1950, with the belief that Israel was the promised land. Their dreams began to crumble, however, when they were moved into a squalid migration camp. Worse was still to come—Zohara’s young brother was sent to hospital with a cold, where he suddenly died. Now, at her mother’s house, Zohara is surprised to find many songs her mother wrote and recorded, along with evidence of a love affair with a fellow migrant. Meanwhile, nephew Yoni deals with his own grief by joining a protest group who view the Oslo Accords, offering land for peace, as a betrayal of Israel’s founding ideals.