Movies
“For the Love of a Woman” is based on a novel by Israeli prize-winning author Meir Shalev.
via Vincezo Aluia
In 1988, Meir Shalev published his first novel, “The Blue Mountain.” It was a book that, along with his future novels, would help cement the journalist and writer as one of the greatest Israeli authors of all time.
Shalev was born in the Jezreel Valley, and it is the setting of his many romantic historical novels. He died there, too, in 2023. His books have gotten their fair share of theater and movie adaptations (including his amazing oeuvre of children’s books, like “Nechama the Lice”). The latest film inspired by his work is based on his book “For the Love of Judith.”
“For the Love of a Woman,” which opens to the public in theaters this June 26 (though it debuted at festivals in 2025), is heavily based on the novel, whose Hebrew title, “Ka’Yamin Achadim” (“As a Few Days”) comes from the Genesis line: “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” The film is directed by an Italian director, Guido Chiesa, and adapted by his partner in life and writing, Nicoletta Micheli, who found resonance in the story despite not being Jewish at all.
The film tells the story of Yehudit, who in 1930s pre-state Israel, was loved by three men in a fictional moshav in the Jezreel Valley. Yehudit is played by Romanian “Andor” star Ana Ularu. Her three longtime “suitors” are: Moshe, a widower with two children, who hires Yehudit to come to his aid after losing his wife, played by Serbian actor and director Alban Ukaj. There’s romantic farmer Yaakov Scheinfeld, who, like the biblical character he is named after, knows how to love for years, played by “Game of Thrones” and “The Man in the High Castle” actor Marc Rissmann. And then, there’s Globerman, a cattle dealer, played by Ukrainian actor Serhiy Kysil.
Four decades later, it’s a new fictional character created by Micheli and Chiesa, Esther, who travels to Israel to find Yehudit at the behest of her recently departed mother, who unravels their story, much in the same way it unfolds in the book, with the help of Zeyde (yes, a character named for the Yiddish word for grandfather), a university professor, played by Ori Pfeffer.
Zeyde tells Esther about the love affair between Yehudit and these three men and some shocking facts about their history. Esther, played by renowned Israeli actress Mili Avital’s (“Stargate,” “Kugel,” “Prisoners of War”), who grew up in America, very much disconnected from her family’s connection to Israel, discovers new truths about her roots.
The film also stars Israeli TV and film icons Menashe Noy (“Gett,” “Big Bad Wolves”) and Moni Moshonov (“Late Marriage,” “Zehu Zeh,” “The Jews Are Coming”), who you can see in its lush and intriguing trailer. Ultimately, it’s a star-studded, expansive and sweeping story about love and fierce Jewish women, and also an ode to the narratives of one of Israel’s greatest storytellers.
“For the Love of a Woman” opens on June 26 at the Quad Cinema in New York.
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Lior Zaltzman is a senior writer at Kveller.
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