Valeria Is Getting Married

Christina came from Ukraine four years ago to marry Michael, an Israeli man she met through an agency. She works in a beauty salon, saves for fertility treatment, and wants to convert and become a citizen. Michael, for his part, makes money arranging the same kind of marriages for other men. Now his client is Eitan, a lonely man who has paid five thousand dollars, and the bride is Christina's younger sister, Valeria. They pick her up at the airport and bring her to their small apartment in Bat Yam, where she is supposed to meet her future husband. Valeria looks at her sister's life and starts to have doubts.

Michal Vinik builds almost the whole film inside that cramped apartment, over a single day, and the tension rises like in a thriller. What looks at first like a slightly awkward family reunion becomes a story about power, money and who owns whom. Dasha Tvoronovich is quietly magnetic as Valeria, a young woman who says very little but sees everything, and Lena Fraifeld is heartbreaking as Christina, who has made her peace with a deal she can no longer look at clearly.

It is a short, tight, uncomfortable film about the business of mail-order marriage, about men who think they can buy love and women who are told they should be grateful for the chance. The final act is gripping. It premiered at Venice and won the Ophir Award for Best Screenplay. Small in scale, big in impact.