Atalia (Michal Bat-Adam) is a 40-year-old widow who lost her husband in the Six-Day War and lives on a kibbutz with her adolescent daughter (Gail Ben-Ner).

Lonely and feeling outcast, she enters into a forbidden affair with her daughter's classmate, Matti (Yiptach Katzur), an idealistic 19-year-old who had been rejected by the army.

The slow degeneration of the once-idealistic kibbutz into a puritanical society, the strait-jacket of its conservative view of masculinity, and the conformity of her daughter all provide a backdrop to Atalia's problems.

The original Athaliah was a Biblical queen of Judea, whom the Bible presents as a tyrannical usurper and idolater.

Used, though not commonly, as a female first name in Israel, Atalia is a secularist name associated with the sector of Israeli society which tends to rebel against old traditions and conventions and seek new ways.