Fill the Void Israel 2012 – 99min.

Movie Rating

Fill the Void

Valérie Lobsiger
Movie Rating: Valérie Lobsiger

In a Jewish Orthodox district, a young woman is forced to marry the husband of her dead sister.

In Tel Aviv, the family of 18-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) is celebrating Purim with tradition and joy. Her mother has prepared a grand feast and her father is receiving the poor to give them alms. Then her pregnant sister Esther loses consciousness. Although she dies in the hospital, the baby is saved. Esther's husband Yochay (Yiftach Klein) soon decides to remarry. His choice is a young widow who lives within the Orthodox community in Belgium. When she hears this, Shira's mother is devastated, because she doesn't want to be separated from her grandson. She suggests that Shira marry her brother-in-law. Seduced by Shira's beauty and sweetness, Yochay lets himself be convinced. But what does Shira think about all this?

One never really finds out what Shira thinks, even as she's burdened by moral obligations, taboos, doubts, dreams and her own desires. But the camera rests for long periods on her extraordinarily expressive, beautiful face, inviting viewers to interpret for themselves the rich palette of her emotions. Director Rama Burshtein, born in the United States in 1967 and now a resident of Tel Aviv, married into the Orthodox faith at 25. Through this film she presents herself as a kind of ambassador for the traditions of a culture she holds dear, but in which women don't seem to have control over their own futures.

31.05.2021

4

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