'A Tale Of Love And Darkness' Trailer: See Natalie Portman's Feature Directorial Debut [UPDATED]

UPDATE: An updated A Tale of Love and Darkness trailer with English subtitles has just been released, and you can check it out after the jump. Original story from 08/12/2015 follows.

For her feature directorial debut, Natalie Portman also wrote and starred in A Tale of Love and Darkness, an adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Amos Oz, effectively an account of the founding of the state of Isreal as recounted through events in Oz's own life. The story begins in 1945 in Jerusalem, honing in on Oz's family – young Amos (Amir Tessler), parents Arieh (Gilad Kahana) and Fania (Portman) — as tensions mount between Jews and Arabs towards the end of the Mandate for Palestine.

There's no domestic trailer for the film just yet, but we do have an international trailer for A Tale of Love and Darkness. While there's no English language dialogue here, the trailer still communicates quite a lot through the imagery captured by Portman and her cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Black Hawk Down, Gattaca). Have a look after the break.

A Tale of Love and Darkness premiered at Cannes; currently there's no US release date. Some Cannes reviews were critical for the film's gloomy tone, and there's no question that this footage might tend towards the dour. But it also has a beauty of its own, more than a spark of life thanks to Portman's charisma. We're eager to see more.

Thanks to /Film reader Daniel R for pointing this out. Trailer via United King Films.

A family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. A Tale of Love and Darkness is the story of a boy who grows up in war-torn Jerusalem, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide. The story of a man who leaves the constraints of his family and community to join a kibbutz, change his name, marry, have children. The story of a writer who becomes an active participant in the political life of his nation.