WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

mr5050 This film was advised by the Israeli embassy to be shown at our community Yom Ha Atsmaut celebration. All we knew was that there was "some nudity." I also doubt the organizers of this event had read the proviso contained on this site! Although acceptable by contemporary Adult standards in our community, it was definitely NOT acceptable for family viewing. Approximately 75% of our audience walked out with their children! There were NO CHILDREN left in this showing at the end of it! I believe the "message" of the film was severely compromised by the gratuitous and blatant sexuality portrayed. I believe the sexualized scenes were designed to attract curious 16 year old boys, not families with younger kids!

friedt In Avi Nesher's warm and humorous film, very British Indians settle in a dry town near the desert and must learn to cope with their French speaking Moroccan neighbors. That they are all Jews helps little; there are major differences in language, customs, and attitudes. Set in 1968 and narrated by Sarah, the teenage daughter from Bombay, the film deals gently but genuinely with the problems of adolescent angst as well as more serious issues of struggling immigrants dumped by the bureaucracy in a remote border town. Despite the insistence of Nicole, Sarah's friend and the sixteen year old town beauty, that nothing locally is worth chronicling, the film is particularly adept at depicting the greatest passions in the most ordinary people. Though the narrator is not always aware of it, there are love affairs, labor unrest, tragic illness, jealousies, and other personal dramas. The larger issues include a strike at the bottling plant, the town's only employer, and a visit by the championship cricket team, arranged by the British consulate. Although the Moroccan Jews initially jeer this "child's game," they eventually join the Indian ex pats for the match, with predictably hilarious and disastrous results. By the time adulthood arrives with the girls receiving their notice for the Army, we have a sense how new Israelis are formed from their varied ethnic backgrounds.Nesher's casting is impeccable, down to the smallest role. Particularly wonderful is the way he matches the tall, statuesque Moroccan wife with her short, older, balding husband, and makes their caring relationship totally believable. The fact is that all the characters are memorable, from the sexy widow upstairs, to the handsome Indian dance teacher, to the Tel Aviv poet, teaching high school in the desert. Despite its mixture of spoken Hebrew, English, French, pidgin, and gestures, the excellent subtitles manage to convey even puns effectively. This polyglot of languages, as the clashing customs, reminds us just how very diverse Jews are, how the cultures of their birth countries create a Jewishness that is never monolithic, until, perhaps, it is transformed into "Israeliness."

gelman@attglobal.net For non-Israelis, Left Turn at the End of the World is a revealing look at conflicts between Jewish communities originating in different parts of the world. Forced to live next to one another in a desolate "development town" in the Negev, Indian Jews from Bombay and Moroccan Jews, each confronting a loss of status (or imagined status) in their countries of origin, begin by despising one another and ultimately learn to live with one another, mainly through the agency of two teenage girls who befriend one another despite their differences in outlook. For those who do not speak Hebrew comfortably, this film is easier to follow than most Israeli films, not only because the subtitles are especially well done, but because the Indian Jews converse among themselves in English and the Moroccan Jews mostly in French with only rudimentary Hebrew to link them. Although one could summarize the story without ruining the experience for a viewer, it is not the plot that matters but the conflict and the accommodation. The acting is splendid, though only a couple of the actors were known (outside Israel) before this film, and only a couple have been heard from since. The two girls -- both are actually in their 20's -- the man-eating widow, the Indian father and mother and the Moroccan father and mother all distinguish themselves. It's funny at times, emotionally wrenching and true.

jacksteeley To be fair, the movie is more sexually explicit than it needs to be to tell its story, otherwise, I'd have rated it higher.It tells a good story of discrimination between two groups, the Moroccan Jews and the Indian Jews in a tiny town in the desert. It is also about the friendship between two teen-aged girls, Sarah (Indian) and Nicole (Moroccan) in that town. The girls become fast friends despite their differences in personality and their different ethnic backgrounds.We get the story of a labor dispute at the only employer for both the Moroccans and Indians, and how each group deals with it - the differences separating the two communities, despite their common circumstances, how they try to work together, and again are torn apart.There is marital infidelity and sexual awakening among both the girls and the boys, how they cope with it, and the emptiness of some of their solutions.It ends up being both funny and redemptive, in spite of the death of a character.