Set in contemporary Jerusalem, this tragic love story tells how the insular, misogynistic fundamentalism of ultra-orthodox Chasidism subjugates and suffocates the lives of two sisters. Rivka and her husband share a deep intimacy, but their ten year marriage is threatened with dissolution because it has not produced offspring. Malka, Rivka's younger sister, is in love with a man who's left the messianic enclave for a secular life, so she is married off instead to a brute. The film is rich in the details of fetishistic ritual and archaic religious observance that inform the cult-like sexual politics.

Havi Hoffman