ABSORBED BY LOVE

Since the mass immigration from the former Soviet Union, Israeli print media, television and film have scrutinised the morality and Zionist commitment of “the Russians”. This scrutiny engendered stereotypes of the new immigrants as threatening the allegedly unified Israeli‐Jewish identity. This article examines the discourse of “Russian” immigration in Israeli cinema as located at the nexus of gender, nation and ethnicity. We examine two recent films about young “Russian” women who are successfully “absorbed” into Israel through romance with Israeli sabra men: Saint Clara (1995) and Yana's Friends (1999). Situating the films' immigration narratives within the context of the cinematic representation and discursive positioning of “internal others”—women, Holocaust survivors and Mizrahim—the article demonstrates how these two films produce a partially resistant reading of the Israeli‐Zionist discourse of immigration. By analysing the new representations of “Russian” immigrants in Israeli films, this article continues and extends the study of the politics of Israeli cinema.