Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

dromasca The Hebrew name of the film is a little longer than the one chosen by the distributors for the English version. It reads 'The Mission of the Human Resources Manager' and actually the word used is 'shlihut' which has a wider significance - it means not only mission, but also the acts of performing an important duty, or of being a messenger for important news. The news in this case are about a death, but the film touches only marginally the reasons and the absurdity of that death, and deals more about how the people who remained in life cope with the disappearance and how this impacts their lives - including the one of the messenger.Based on a novel of AB Yehoshua the film tells the story of the aftermath of a terror attack, one of these crazy suicidal acts that took place during the second intifada about a decade ago. One of the victims of the attack is identified quite lately as a Romanian woman working a manual job in a bakery in the town. A beautiful woman whose face we know only from a photo and later from a short film made on a phone, whose body nobody came to claim or identify because she was one of the thousand of foreign workers who come to Israel and perform hard and low paid works nobody else wants to do in order to support their families back home. The duty to take the coffin with the body home to Romania, and try to compensate the family there falls on the manager of the human resources (the absurdity of the terminology is so well exposed by this film), a man who has problems of his own - solidly acted by Mark Ivanir, an actor I did not notice until now - he works more for the TV and games industry in the US, here he gets an opportunity to make a serious role in an Israeli film, and does it fine. What results is a trip in unknown territory for the Jerusalemite clerk and the journalist accompanying him (Guri Alfi, better known here as a stand-up comedian), a clash not only of two different cultures and but also of different approaches to life and death.The film is not bad, but it's a missed opportunity. Made in 2010, a year when both the Romanian and Israeli films industry were riding high on waves of success, it could have brought together some of the best in the two schools of cinematography - the Israeli dramatic school of political cinema which after decades of avoiding the tough questions raised by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict succeeded in a few film that take a sharp and uncompromising look at the issues and the Romanian minimalist realism which looks back to the Communist era and the transition that followed, and also to the contemporary chaotic situation in Romania not only with anger, but also with humor and especially with human understanding. Amazingly, director Eran Riklis' style and place in the Israeli cinema fits rather well the Romanian cinema style. The problem lies in the folklorist approach taken in dealing with the Romanian reality. If the Israeli team would have taken a local director as consultant, they could have maybe avoided some of the stereotypes of the script. I should say that the Romanian actors do their best to fill in the holes of the story on this respect, but this is not always enough. Even so, it's a pleasure to see great actors like Irina Petrescu (a Romanian legend) or Gila Almagor who can be considered as her Israeli counterpart on the same cast (although they never meet on screen). And more than all, this is the last and final role in the career of Rozina Cambos. Despite its flaws Riklis' film has enough good parts to make for an interesting viewing.

khcowles I absolutely loved this film. It unfolds slowly, but the rich mix of sorrow, insight, and comedy makes the journey worth traveling. These are relatable characters - quirky, funny, human, unsure of where to step next. The cinematography perfectly captures the gritty beauty of these landscapes - from Jerusalem to somewhere deep in Eastern Europe. There's a similar feel to the road trip in Little Miss Sunshine: unlikely families pulled together in the pursuit of a goal no one knows is really a wise undertaking in the first place. I review it a 9 instead of 10 because there's a slowness to the pace of the film at the beginning that belies what follows; but it's a film I will want to see again and share with friends.

gradyharp THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER is not only the main character of this smart, funny, touching film, it is also the theme: dealing with human responses to illogical situations takes skills few people have mastered. Based on the novel 'A Woman in Jerusalem' by Abraham B. Jehoshua, adapted for the screen by Noah Stollman, and directed with great flair by Eran Riklis, this little story begins as a strange tiny seed and grows into a lesson about the sanctity of the human spirit by films end. A Human Resources Manager (Mark Ivanir is a multifaceted performance) is divorced from his wife (Reymond Amsalem) and only sees his daughter (Roni Koren) on occasion. He has been brought to Jerusalem by The Widow (Gila Almagor) to be the Human Resources Manager to Jerusalem's largest bakery because of his skills, but soon the climate changes: an Romanian ex-employee Yulia has been found dead due to a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, an employee unknown to the HR Manager, and the Press (in the person of 'The Weasel' - Guri Alfi - a looney photographer journalist) decides to make a case of corporate coldness in the situation. The Widow places the possible corporate disaster in the HR Manager's hands, and after much research, it is discovered that the body being kept in the city morgue cannot be buried without a family member 's signature. Yulia's ex-husband (Bogdan E. Stanoevitch) is uncovered but cannot sign for the body's release because the couple was divorced. The HR manager is directed to take the casket to Romania, have Yulia's mother (Irina Petrescu) sign for it, and bury the body there. The men - HR Manager, ex-husband, and Weasel - begrudgingly set off for Romania where they are met by the Israeli Counsel (Rosina Kambus) and her amour (Julian Negulesco) who offer their van and driver (Papil Panduru) to take the body to Yulia's home. At the town where Yulia had lived the group encounters Yulia's son (Noah Silver), a juvenile delinquent whom the father had thrown out of the home. Many conflicts arise before the boy joins the group, takes the body to the boy's grandmother who informs the little groups that Yulia lived and died in Jerusalem and must be returned there to be buried! The van collapses and the HR Manager and Weasel must return the body to Jerusalem in an army tank. It is an ongoing comedy of errors, but in the course of events the HR Manager rediscovers his own soft side of his humanity and learns the importance of human relations within families, towns, governments and people in general. Though the story is potentially a very sad statement about how immigrants are treated by corporations and how victims of suicide bombings can be all but forgotten, but the writing of script keeps the all too human acts of errors and acts of personal forgiveness beautifully balanced. The entire cast is excellent, but Mark Ivanir as the Human Resources Manager makes the film work - a brilliant, understated performance that spreads over the entire range of human responses and reactions. The film is visually stunning, showing us the beauty of Jerusalem, the devastation of Romania, and the incredibly picturesque winter scenes in Romania's very catholic towns. In Hebrew, English and Romanian with English subtitles. It is a little gem of a film. Grady Harp

rmanory I thought that this is a very good movie, and it can make a good candidate for the foreign language Academy Awards. The storyline is based on a novel titled 'A woman in Jerusalem' by one of the better known Israeli authors, A.B. Yehoshua. I have not read the book, but I am told that the story in the novel takes place in Siberia, whereas the film (or most of it) takes place in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. The English title is misleading, the full title in Hebrew means 'The mission of the Human Resources Manager'. A Romanian worker of a very large industrial bakery in Jerusalem is killed in a terrorist attack and is taken to the morgue; a journalist finds out that a salary slip found on her is from the bakery and writes an article blaming her workplace of lacking humanity. Driven by this bad publicity, the bakery sends its HR manager with the mission to "do the right thing" and take care of the proper burial of Iulia Petrache in her home country. However, things are not that simple. For a burial papers need to be signed by the next of kin, and a quest starts for the next of kin, the first one being her husband. However, it turns out that her husband is actually her ex-husband, and her son is still a minor, and the only eligible next of kin is her mother who lives very far, high up in the mountains. So the HR manager decides to get there and do the right thing, bury her in her childhood village, although he had the opportunity to take a shortcut and bury here en route. The intricate story line actually develops into a story of human relationships between total strangers. The journalist travels with the HR manager, and along the way they pick up Iulia's rebel son and travel to their distant destination in the company of weird people. There is humor and drama in these relationships, and the initial mutual animosity and contempt develop into a weird friendship. There are many twists and turns in the story and they all add to a movie that keeps the audience in constant suspense about what happens next. The characters, even the minor ones, are well played, and although some of the situations are practically impossible, overall the story line gets the viewer involved not only in the tragedy of Iulia's death but also in the tragedies of each of the other characters: the HR manager and his shattered family life, the orphan teenager and his bad relationship with his father, the bakery's night shift manager, and finally, the encounter with Iulia's mother who says that Iulia was unhappy in the village. This movie is very close to being a masterpiece. The cinematography is amazing and the camera goes into small details, such as a herd of geese crossing the road on the Romanian countryside. The only happy people in the movie seem the be the Israeli consular representative and her husband, and they provide some comic relief for the otherwise tragic situations. Highly recommended.