[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
    Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    EmmysSuperheroes GuideSan Diego Comic-ConSummer Watch GuideBest Of 2025 So FarDisability Pride MonthSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • FAQ
IMDbPro

A Tale of Love and Darkness

  • 2015
  • PG-13
  • 1h 35m
IMDb RATING
6.0/10
4.5K
YOUR RATING
Natalie Portman in A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015)
Trailer for A Tale Of Love And Darkness
Play trailer1:47
8 Videos
99+ Photos
BiographyDramaHistoryMysteryRomanceWar

The story of Amos Oz's youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. The film details the young man's relationsh... Read allThe story of Amos Oz's youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. The film details the young man's relationship with his mother and his beginnings as a writer, while looking at what happens when the ... Read allThe story of Amos Oz's youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel. The film details the young man's relationship with his mother and his beginnings as a writer, while looking at what happens when the stories we tell become the stories we live.

  • Director
    • Natalie Portman
  • Writers
    • Natalie Portman
    • Amos Oz
  • Stars
    • Natalie Portman
    • Gilad Kahana
    • Amir Tessler
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.0/10
    4.5K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Natalie Portman
    • Writers
      • Natalie Portman
      • Amos Oz
    • Stars
      • Natalie Portman
      • Gilad Kahana
      • Amir Tessler
    • 33User reviews
    • 65Critic reviews
    • 55Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 nominations total

    Videos8

    A Tale of Love and Darkness
    Trailer 1:47
    A Tale of Love and Darkness
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    Trailer 1:54
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    Trailer 1:54
    A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS - Official Trailer
    Family Toast
    Clip 0:56
    Family Toast
    Be Kind
    Clip 0:35
    Be Kind
    Monks Story
    Clip 1:52
    Monks Story
    A Tale Of Love And Darkness: Monk's Story (US)
    Clip 1:52
    A Tale Of Love And Darkness: Monk's Story (US)

    Photos157

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 151
    View Poster

    Top cast61

    Edit
    Natalie Portman
    Natalie Portman
    • Fania
    Gilad Kahana
    Gilad Kahana
    • Arieh
    Amir Tessler
    Amir Tessler
    • Amos
    Moni Moshonov
    Moni Moshonov
    • Old Amos
    • (voice)
    Ohad Knoller
    Ohad Knoller
    • Israel Zarchi
    Makram Khoury
    Makram Khoury
    • Al Hilwani
    • (as Makram J. Khoury)
    Neta Riskin
    Neta Riskin
    • Haya
    Alexander Peleg
    Alexander Peleg
    • Old Amos
    • (as Alex Peleg)
    Rotem Keinan
    Rotem Keinan
    • Tsvi
    Tomer Capone
    Tomer Capone
    • The Pioneer
    • (as Tomer Kapon)
    Yonatan Shiray
    Yonatan Shiray
    • Teenage Amos
    Vladimir Friedman
    Vladimir Friedman
    • Mr. Licht
    Henry David
    Henry David
    • Colonel Jan
    Dina Doron
    Dina Doron
    • Grandma Klausner
    • (as Dina Doronne)
    Yitzhak Peker
    • Grandpa Klausner
    • (as Itzhak Peker)
    Dima Ross
    Dima Ross
    • Pharmacist
    Bar Sade
    Bar Sade
    • Sonia
    Jana Fridman
    Jana Fridman
    • Grandma Mussman
    • Director
      • Natalie Portman
    • Writers
      • Natalie Portman
      • Amos Oz
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews33

    6.04.5K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    7alexanderliljefors

    Beautiful! Pure Art! Wow Natalie portman!

    I first discovered this film looking through Portmans filmography and saw that it was a Cannes competition film. So i decided to give it a try.

    Portman truly does a fantastic job in her role AND as directing the film!

    The first minutes you will notice the cinematography is stunningly beautiful! Visual is amazing!

    You will also notice very early that this is a extremly deep and emotional film.

    Beautiful and amazingly performed storytelling!

    Filming along with music is marvellous good!

    Manuscript is pure art and pure poetry!

    Beautiful environment!

    A extremely well made film almost in every way!

    Its a complex, but very good film that i truly recommend!
    7Moviegoer19

    A Moving and Artistic Film

    I have not read the book upon which the film was based, so my comments are purely on the film. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes in I was thinking, okay, what's going on here? Why should I care about this story and these characters? As I continued to watch my caring about the characters and their story increased, until, by the end, I was very moved and cared deeply.

    At some point beyond halfway, I thought the greatest feat here is the creation of mood, not only of the characters but of the whole world presented in the film, and then, transferred to me, by virtue of my watching and listening to it. It's a visual and auditory feast.

    A lot happens in this film, both personally and historically, but ultimately what I was left with was a sense of a man recalling his childhood and the emotion that he carried with him through his life. As other reviewers have indicated, it's a poetic film, and I wound up absorbing it the way I might a poem. And in that way, it worked beautifully.
    4segacs

    A collection of beautiful parts that don't quite add up to a whole

    I wanted to like this. I really did. Natalie Portman's directorial debut taking on an epic Amos Oz novel about his early life set against the tale of the birth of the State of Israel should have been wonderful. Instead, it felt like a series of beautiful cinematic vignettes that didn't quite come together to form a cohesive narrative. The dramatic tension is missing. The motivations of Oz and his mother and father are not explained. A couple of political scenes inserted to give some context -- namely the scene with the Arab girl and her brother, and the scene where the UN vote is being read out -- feel clunky and not well linked to the more personal story being told. If I hadn't come into the movie already having a good grasp of the history of mandatory Palestine and Israel's early years, I feel I would have been totally lost, as so much was glossed over or not really explored. Moreover, the most interesting parts to me were those that explored Amos's relationship with his father, but Portman chose to focus the narrative on his enigmatic, struggling mother -- someone you get the sense that the boy himself never really understood. There are a lot of wonderful scenes here, but they don't really go anywhere. Haval.
    9howard.schumann

    Beautiful and poetic

    In a quiet moment in Natalie Portman's ("Knight of Cups") beautiful and poetic A Tale of Love and Darkness, a mother says to her young son "If you have to choose between telling a lie or insulting someone, choose to be generous." When the boy asks her whether or not it is alright to lie, she replies, "Sometimes... yes. It's better to be sensitive than to be honest." It is an important lesson, one I wish I had learned earlier in my life. Written and directed by Portman, who also stars as Fania, Amos' (Amir Tessler) troubled mother, the film is based on the memoir of Israeli novelist and journalist Amos Oz and is set in Jerusalem in the critical period before the transition from the British mandate in Palestine to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli War.

    Opening in 1945 after the Klausner's escape from the desecration of a once vibrant culture in Eastern Europe, it is the story of the early influences in Oz's life that propelled him to become a famous writer. As narrated by Moni Moshonov and told from the viewpoint of the older Amos Oz recollecting his past, the film attempts to probe the depths of a family whose dream of a land of milk and honey becomes darker as it progresses, telling us that the worst thing that can happen to a dream is that it is fulfilled. Amos' father Arieh (Gilad Kahana, "The Man in the Wall") is a librarian who has just published is first novel and desperately wants to achieve the success of his own father, historian Joseph Klausner. Though he does not succeed, he never stops being thankful for Israel, telling his son, "You'll be bullied in school, but not because you're Jewish." We learn early in the film that Amos' mother Fania blames herself for leaving behind a life of wealth. It is a self-inflicted wound exacerbated by her own mother's verbal cruelty, one that is manifested by insomnia, migraine headaches, and a long struggle with depression that ended with her suicide at the young age of 38. Fania is a story teller whose stories, fables, and tales of far-away lands continue to enrich Amos' life and Amos himself begins to tell stories to keep bullies from attacking him at school. The humble Amos denies that he is sensitive, saying he wants to be a farmer or a dog murderer and goes to work on a kibbutz, but the sensitive can do nothing about who they are but only attempt to share it and make it real for others.

    Amos' story is depicted in the context of the short-lived joy after the U.N.'s vote to partition Palestine and the Arab attacks on Jerusalem that killed many of the family's friends and neighbors. Their home becomes a shelter for those fleeing the Arab bombs and the real consequences of Zionism and the ideal of statehood become apparent, a society caught between memories of the holocaust and fears that it will happen again. As Fania's growing depression and her drift from reality dominates the landscape, the film loses a measure of dramatic impact, yet it remains compelling and literate, attesting to the way the promise of Israel has been shattered by strident voices fighting centuries-old struggles for domination.

    A Tale of Love and Darkness is an intimate film, a film of memory, one told in incidents and flashbacks. Like a film of Terence Malick, it talks in whispers, a language that exists only in the soul. There is little plot to describe, only moods and gestures. Fania's death is the film's central theme and it remains a mystery, buried in the enigma of a woman who has forgotten how to dream, yet it is transcended by the death of the dream of two vibrant cultures living together in peace and brotherhood. Early in the film, Amos is on his best behavior at a party in the home of a Palestinian neighbor. When he meets an Arab girl who can speak Hebrew, there is an immediate connection and he tells her that "there is room for two peoples in this land," but the dream ends suddenly when Amos, playing at being Tarzan, falls from a tree when the chains of a swing break injuring a little girl and the sudden chasm between the two cultures becomes a sad portent of the future.
    6kareemamgad

    A Visually Poetic Film Elevated by Natalie Portman's Performance

    A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015), Natalie Portman's directorial debut, is an ambitious and emotionally resonant adaptation of Amos Oz's memoir. The film explores the complexities of life in post-World War II Jerusalem, weaving a deeply personal story against a backdrop of political and societal upheaval.

    Natalie Portman not only directs but also delivers a stunning and heartfelt performance as Fania, a mother whose struggles reflect the turbulence of the time. Her portrayal is deeply nuanced and emotionally captivating, embodying both strength and fragility in equal measure. Watching her is an absolute privilege.

    I cannot overstate how much I admire Natalie Portman-not only for her incredible talent, which has solidified her as the greatest actress of the last decade, but also for her sheer beauty. She is, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman in the world, and her screen presence in this film only reinforces her unmatched elegance and charisma.

    While the film is undeniably poetic and visually striking, its pacing can feel slow at times, and the narrative occasionally loses focus. Nevertheless, Portman's dedication to bringing this deeply personal story to life shines through, making it a thoughtful and heartfelt project.

    A Tale of Love and Darkness is not without its flaws, but it's a testament to Natalie Portman's immense talent both in front of and behind the camera.

    More like this

    Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
    6.3
    Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
    The Summoning
    4.6
    The Summoning
    Hesher
    6.9
    Hesher
    Goya's Ghosts
    6.9
    Goya's Ghosts
    Macadam Stories
    7.0
    Macadam Stories
    Jackie
    6.6
    Jackie
    Jane Got a Gun
    5.9
    Jane Got a Gun
    Illusions & Mirrors
    5.7
    Illusions & Mirrors
    Free Zone
    5.7
    Free Zone
    Dior: Miss Dior
    7.3
    Dior: Miss Dior
    Dior: Miss Dior
    6.6
    Dior: Miss Dior
    Dior: Miss Dior
    6.5
    Dior: Miss Dior

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The producers wanted the adaptation to be filmed in English but Natalie Portman fought for it to remain in Hebrew, like the book.
    • Quotes

      Old Amos: The only way to keep the dream alive, full of hope and not disappointing is to never try to implement it. A dream brought to life is disappointing. This disappointment is the nature of dreams.

      [last lines]

    • Connections
      Referenced in Evening Urgant: Viacheslav Fetisov/Ladlena Fetisova (2015)
    • Soundtracks
      Opening Music
      Performed by Caitlin Sullivan, Kyle Armbrust

      Composed by Nicholas Britell

      (P) 2015 Voltage Pictures under exclusive license to Milan Entertainment Inc.

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    FAQ19

    • How long is A Tale of Love and Darkness?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • September 3, 2015 (Israel)
    • Countries of origin
      • Israel
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • Official site
      • Official site (Japan)
    • Languages
      • Hebrew
      • English
      • Arabic
      • Russian
    • Also known as
      • 愛與黑暗的故事
    • Filming locations
      • Jerusalem, Israel(location)
    • Production companies
      • Focus World
      • Avi Chai fund
      • Gesher Fund
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $4,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $572,212
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $37,170
      • Aug 21, 2016
    • Gross worldwide
      • $724,885
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 35 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Natalie Portman in A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015)
    Top Gap
    By what name was A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015) officially released in India in English?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.