Fresh
This is an extraordinary first film, nerve-tingling in its intensity, and assembled with a finesse and control even the great Austrian director Michael Haneke might envy.
Trevor Johnston, Time Out
Overview
Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream come true, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child, Mordechay. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira's promised match. Everything changes when a match is proposed to Yochay-Esther's late husband-to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it's too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may marry the widow and move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty. She will find out that the void which she must choose exists only within her heart.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
88%
Tomatometer
Fresh
Beautiful and mysterious, the[se] first glimpses are an ideal primer for the Israeli film, which never rushes to spell out the meanings of its subtle and quiet moments.
Stephanie Merry, Washington Post
Fresh
It's an artful, character-driven drama that constitutes a minor miracle of empathy.
Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Fresh
Burshtein creates a one-of-a-kind portrait that nonetheless transcends its setting, and even its worldview; the dynamics are global.
John Anderson, Newsday
Fresh
Burshtein has achieved a gripping film without victims or villains, an ambiguous tragedy drawing on universal themes of love and loss, self-sacrifice and self-preservation.
Peter Keough, Boston Globe
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