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Yana's Friends
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:30
Fresh:30
Rotten:0
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: A heartwarming movie that handles some weighty subjects with humor.
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: The Gulf War provides the background for an unlikely romance in this 1999 Israeli film that won 10 national awards. Yana (Evelyne Kaplun), pregnant and in debt, is being left by her husband. When... The Gulf War provides the background for an unlikely romance in this 1999 Israeli film that won 10 national awards. Yana (Evelyne Kaplun), pregnant and in debt, is being left by her husband. When Saddam Hussein releases poison gas missile, Yana is forced to remain in her apartment with Eli (Nir Levy), a wedding photographer who is easily charmed by women. Sealed in a bedroom, the two find they relate to each through one another's powerful stories. Set in 1991, this romance and two other unlikely pairings prove that love blooms when it is least expected. [More]
Starring: Evelyne Kaplun, Nir Levy
Starring: Evelyne Kaplun, Nir Levy
Director: Arik Kaplun
Director: Arik Kaplun
Reviews for Yana's Friends
[Yana's] understated optimism and enjoyment of life gives the film much of its vitality.
Sweet, sexy, and unexpectedly enchanting, "Yana's Friends" is the little feel-good comedy that could.
It is heartwarming and often funny, but in its lightness somehow misses the mark.
An appealing Israeli film about the resiliency needed by a small band of Russian immigrants to survive in difficult times.
Amusing with one unforgettable gag, Kaplun's film does a passable job of portraying the hardships endured by immigrants but is more notable for placing a light-hearted tale in a decidedly heavy time and place.
Slight though it may be, Yana's Friends is life-affirming and filled with comic spirit that erupts even at the worst of times.
Portrays not only the fear that Israelis live with every day, but also the difficulties in a nation where people are arriving from all over the world, not knowing Hebrew.
Yana's Friends isn't a black comedy, strictly speaking. But it somehow manages to find a surprising amount of humor in deadly serious and even potentially tragic situations.
[Kaplun's] gentle, clear-eyed affection for his characters smooths out the film's rough edges and reminds viewers that friendship and even joy can be found during the most frightening times.
Yana's Friends works best showing its characters coping with war uncomfortably close to home.
The film eloquently persuades us that it is better to laugh than cry and better to make love than war, messages that never go out of date.
I never imagined that Yana's Friends would one day turn out to be so timely for all New Yorkers -- and indeed, all Americans.
A warm humanity washes over this lovely film, whose message is that gestures of love, however small or awkward, are crucial to the complicated art of survival.
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