Sweet Mud

One of the most accomplished and celebrated international dramas of the year, Sweet Mud peels back the romantic mythology surrounding communal life on an Israeli kibbutz to tell a more personal, poignant story of thwarted love, adolescent awakening and human longings and failings. It is a deeply felt and beautifully photographed drama, worthy of all the acclaim it has received, both within Israel and abroad. It is 1974. On a kibbutz (collective farming community) in southern Israel, amid verdant, fertile landscapes, a boy is entering a troubled bar mitzvah year. Dvir (Tomer Steinhof) is 12; his father is dead, his brother is in the army and his mother Miri (the exquisite Ronit Yudkevitch) is emotionally fragile, nearly unstable. When her much-rumored boyfriend actually appears from Switzerland, things begin to look up for Dvir and Miri. Before long, however, a series of small but earthshaking conflicts will test the nascent family as well as the ability of the kibbutz community to take care of its most vulnerable members. Writer/director Dror Shaul drew from his own childhood growing up on kibbutz Kissufim in southern Israel. “My film confronts the collective memory of a kibbutz, as a habitat to picturesque landscapes and nature’s magical scents, with my own private memories in which people are people, regardless of the ideology they may choose to wear.…My aim was to make a film about the longing for warmth and emotions, a longing for the illusion that we are not alone.” Shaul was invited to develop Sweet Mud at the prestigious Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs. The film was Israel’s official entry to the 2007 Academy Awards and won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance, the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and six Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture.