Menashe

Joshua Z Weinstein’s fascinating and intimate portrait of Hassidic Jewish life in Brooklyn is shot-through with a restrained sense of realism, not least from the non-professional cast who make their film debuts here. Menashe Lustig plays the eponymous protagonist, a struggling Orthodox Jew who works in a convenience store and never seems to catch a break from his peers, extended family and his young son (Niborsk).

Menashe's brother-in-law Fischel (Falkowitz) roundly mocks him for not being reliable or Orthodox enough and his manager is aggrieved by everything he does. As we slowly learn the details of a sudden tragedy that has befallen Menashe and the reasons why Fischel is sole guardian to his son, our sympathy begins to sink in.

Shot in a direct vérité style, with 98% of the dialogue in Yiddish, Weinstein’s film is illuminating in the way that he has pulled back the curtain on a normally guarded community and presents its practices and customs unpretentiously. Lustig elicits a gentle, bittersweet performance, which is even more poignant considering most of the scenarios in the film are autobiographical.