Guido Chiesa’s film adaptation of Meir Shalev’s novel “A Few Days” is opening in Israel this weekend under the book’s original Hebrew title, while in the United States it is being released as “For the Love of a Woman.” The movie was shot in 2023, but Chiesa says its release was delayed after the October 7 attacks because, as he put it, “nobody wanted to touch it.”
Chiesa said he had feared the film would never come out and believed some of the hesitation stemmed from prejudice against an Italian director making a film about Israel. He added that he is sorry he cannot attend the Israeli premieres because he is committed to being in New York for the U.S. launch. The film adapts Shalev’s third novel, a 1990s bestseller translated into many languages by Barbara Harshav, and set in Israel between the 1920s and 1950s. Its story centers on the love of three men for one woman, Yehudit, the narrator Zayde’s mother.
The screenplay was first written in 2010 for another Italian director, Gabriele Salvatores, but that version never happened. Chiesa later reworked it with his partner and regular collaborator Nicoletta Micali, making the present-day framing device a new element. In their version, Esther, an American Jew of Israeli origin, receives a disturbing letter after her mother’s death and is drawn into a journey of discovery that reveals the novel’s layered plot. Uriel Poper plays Zayde, with Menashe Noy, Moni Moshonov and Italian actress Anna Ularo also starring. Milli Avital plays Esther, whom Chiesa called “perfect” for the role.
Chiesa said the production’s research on Jewish settlement was fascinating and changed his assumptions. He said the team had thought the story was mainly religious, but found that many settlers were socialist, educated and secular, trying not only to move somewhere new but to build a new society. He also said the material now feels politically unwelcome in Italian culture, adding that rising antisemitism made him proud to make the film and to show European audiences that Jewish and Israeli culture is far broader than politics. “Israel has contributed so much to the world, why hate it?” he said. Chiesa noted that filming in Israel was difficult because present-day locations no longer look like the 1930s, so much of the landscape was shot in Sicily.
