Natalie Portman played a ballerina in the grip of psychological trauma in “Black Swan”, but the Israeli actress said she had lots of support while directing her first film, about the childhood of Israeli intellectual Amos Oz, shown in Cannes. Portman both directs and stars in “A Tale of Love and Darkness”, based on Oz’s autobiographical novel of the same name focusing on his relationship with his mother Fania, who committed suicide when Oz was 12. Oz’s mother, played by Portman, was a Polish Jewish refugee from a moneyed family who felt lost in the poverty and violence in Jerusalem during the period surrounding the formation of the Israeli state in 1948.
