About film

After his longtime business partner dies, Yakov Fidelman discovers that his antique furniture-restoration shop is in grave financial difficulty. He's forced to deal with his estranged son, Noah, a lawyer, who, seeing no hope for the failing store, proposes building apartments above it. One day Fidelman's new apprentice, Anton, finds a neglected piano in the workshop: an 1882 Steinway that, given a new baseboard, would be worth enough to save the store. The elegant story lines yield a complex set of frayed character relations for which restoration proves an apt metaphor. Refinishing the piano's exterior would be worthless without replacing the cracked cast-iron board holding the string tension. Marked by restrained writing, which leaves significant details open to interpretation, Restoration depicts the rich texture of modern Israeli society.

Won the grand prize at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival