Aretz Hadasha

This film bungles what is an interesting story: two Jewish kids, fleeing the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, arrive in the newborn nation of Israel seeking refuge and a decent life. On the plus side there are some picturesque, atmospheric scenes and some good sequences showing the refugees trying to make the best of a rough situation.

This film is about a specific period in Israel's history, told through several individual stories layered over one another. The principal story is, as others have said, about a brother and his traumatized younger sister, newly arrived in a make-shift camp during or shortly after the War of Independence.

A powerful and poignant tale of Holocaust survivors trying to make a new life in the infant State of Israel, `New Land' tells its story through the eyes of a young girl. Anna has lost everything in life, except for her older brother and a stuffed bear she rescued from a bombed out city.