Three Sisters

This unusual and beautifully photographed documentary tells the story of three sisters in Tel Aviv, all of whom were in love with the same man in Poland, more than 50 years ago. Fruma won him, though he loved Esther, the youngest, most of all. Today, the sisters take care of their ailing husbands and speak to each other on the telephone (in Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew), but they rarely meet. The pace of this verite documentary matches the pace of their daily life. Director Tzipi Reibenbach takes a deeply personal and cathartic approach to a difficult subject: People whose youth was stolen by the Nazis are now approaching death. With humor and sensitivity, Reibenbach turns the camera on her two aunts, her mother and the skeletons in the family closet. The result is a delicate and powerful requiem for a culture that is slowly taking its leave.

Born in Poland and graduated from Tel Aviv University with a B.Sc. in Mathematics and physics. After losing her husband and father of her daughter in the October 1973 War she started cinema studies at Tel Aviv University where she received her B.F.A. in Film, Television, and Animation in 1980. In 1981, Reibenbach completed her first documentary Widow Plus. In 1993 she completed Choice and Destiny, a family documentary about her parents, and winning the esteemed Grand Prix in Yamagata, Japan, 1995. She is the mother of three children in single parent family. FILMOGRAPHY The Garden, 1976, 8mm, color, 1 minute. Fiction. Hangers , 1978, 16mm, black and white, 15 minutes. Fiction. Widow Plus, 1981, 16mm, black and white, 103 minutes. Documentary. Choice and Destiny, 1993, 16mm, color, 118 minutes. Family documentary. Three Sisters, 1998, 16mm, color, 68 minutes. Family documentary.