When I was in my late teens, I very much wanted to go and live on a kibbutz in Israel. It did not matter to me that I was not Jewish and, as I understood it, it would not matter to many kibbutz communities that I was not Jewish either. While I never thought it would be glamorous, I suppose I thought it would be noble and meaningful.The egalitarian ideals of the kibbutz and its communal living appealed to me — and they still do. Israeli director Dror Shaul’s film ‘Sweet Mud’ offers a whole other idea of kibbutz living than I ever had.

‘Sweet Mud’ is an extremely bleak tale of life on a kibbutz. The film centres around a year in the life of Dvir Avni, as he enters his bar mitzvah year. In addition to 13 challenges the community dictates that he and the other “peaches” in their bar mitzvah year must pass in order to make the crucial move from childhood to adulthood, Dvir faces special challenges. While he and the other children live separately from their parents in the “children’s house”, Dvir must return time and time again to his emotionally unstable mother’s home.

Although Dvir has an older brother, he is very much the stabiliser and caretaker of this family. When his mother Miri’s romance with an older Swiss man is torn apart by an incident at the kibbutz and his brother receives his draft notice, Dvir’s responsibilities are magnified.

His mother suffers an emotional collapse and Dvir is left with no one to guide him through life and his community.

While it may take a village to raise a child, Dvir’s kibbutz fails to make the effort. The kibbutzniks depicted are busy being either sexually depraved, adulterous or unthinkingly dogmatic and borderline sadistically cruel in their interpretation of the kibbutz’s guiding principles.

Dvir finds a friend in Maya, who has been sent to the kibbutz by her father in France and is as alone as he is. It is in the relationships between Maya and Dvir, and Miri and her Swiss lover, Stephan, that the film finds its few tender moments.

The young actor Tomer Steinhof does an excellent job in playing Dvir as an exceptionally sensitive yet strong kid. You cannot help but root for Dvir and believe, as he does, against the odds and the message from the rest of the kibbutzniks, that his mother will recover and they will find happiness. His performance is key to making this film as strong as it is, and saves it from being a merely depressing tale of a horrible childhood.