For once, the film manages to set aside the politics a bit and a human face is seen first.

Yana's Friends is a lovely story. Everything in this film is charming and perfectly moderate. The music is beautiful, the comedy is genuine, the story has it all: finely interwoven stories and surprises, beleivable charm. I wish for the appropriate word; it seems to me this film is, beautifully and charmingly, moderate; and that is what makes it so successful in reaching its aims: to warm, to charm, to make one laugh. Its details, its atmosphere, its characters all are created with a feeling that is not precisely "magic," but "real," and it is genuinely and warmly funny. I think this director, Arik Kaplun, has something to teach to the international scene. (This is the first Israeli film I have the opportunity to watch, and what a good beginning! ) And the actors are a scream. Oh my goodness, are they amazing.

A periodical compared quoted on the box compares Evelyne Kaplun to Audrey Hepburn in elegance. But I think that is a strange comparison, though I can see where they made the connection: Evelyne Kaplun's inmense charm. The quiet, sweet, subtle Yana has a light of her own.

Eli (Nir Levi), if yes, begins the film as a funny but womanizing bachelor wedding videographer, will soon and easily win viewers' hearts.

And then there are the other characters (most of them Russian immigrants) whose stories are woven directly but lightly with Yana's; there is Rosa, the stern landlady who is about to do away with her armor... And Alik (Vladimir Friedman) and Mila (Lena Sachanova) and the paralyzed grandfather and World War II hero Yitzhak (Mosko Alcalay)( who has to, thanks to Alik, "compete" with musiciand/beggar Yuri (Shmil Ben-Ari) for coins), who are in for a surprise. I think Mila especially was a very endearing character, she plays the role of the wife who married not a prince charming, but a man with lots of faults and temper, though always in the end the love from both shines through.

(If you are too tired of words and phrases like Ariel Sharon, Intifada, Abbu Mazen, colonies and occupation, Israeli tanks firing at Palestinian children and suicide bombers taking a whole CafA or bus with them right now... and just wish there was peace in that region for a change, you might want to watch this film... to renew your news-battered heart and join in a prayer [or wish] that peace be possible.)

Lovely, charming film. A splendid debut...