19th Portland Jewish Film Festival
THE MATCHMAKER
DIRECTOR: AVI NESHER
ISRAEL, 2010
THE MATCHMAKER mixes warm comedy with drama as it tells a fresh coming-of-age story set in Haifa in 1968. Arik, a teenage boy, gets a summer job working for Yankele, a mysterious Romanian Holocaust survivor and a matchmaker who promises to get you “what you need, not what you want.” As Arik begins to learn the mysteries of the human heart through his work with Yankele, he falls in love with Tamara, who has just returned from America full of talk about women’s rights, free love, and rock and roll. The disparate parts of Arik’s life collide in unexpected, often funny, and very moving ways as his eyes open to an Israeli society coming to terms with its post-Holocaust identity. (118 mins.)