In the 2012 Israeli film “Fill the Void,” winsome actress Hadas Yaron played Shira Mendelman, a young Hasidic woman who (spoiler alert) marries her dead sister’s husband. Her portrayal of a religious girl in turmoil made such an impression on the international film community –– she took home the Volpi Award for Best Actress at…
Five years ago, at the Sunshine Cinema in Manhattan, I saw the worst movie about Hasidim ever made. “Holy Rollers,” a tale of Brooklyn boychiks gone bad, starred Jesse Eisenberg as Sam Gold, an innocent young thing who gets sucked into the ecstasy smuggling business. The plot was based on a true story, but the…
In Quebec, the term “two solitudes” once described icy/cozy relations between the English and French. But in Maxime Giroux’s sublime “Felix and Meira,” which closes out this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, the phrase seems apt for the Hasidim and hipsters of Montreal’s happening Mile End neighborhood, coexisting without actually engaging. The film’s title…
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