Kadosh

After A Price Above Rubies and, more ludicrously, A Stranger Among Us, this devastating Israeli film offers an authentic look inside an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community located in the Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem. Charting the crises of love and tradition that grip two sisters living in a rigidly patriarchal society, this wrenching drama follows the story of Rivka (Yaël Abecassis), who has been married for ten years to Meir (Yoram Hattab). Although the couple love each other passionately, they are childless, and Rivka is pressured to step aside by a community that prizes progeny above all else. Rivka's beloved sister, Malka (Meital Barda), is equally unhappy: though forced into an arranged marriage, Malka loves an outsider--a rock singer and secular outcast. Director Amos Gitai's documentarian eye opens a window into this insular, little-seen or understood community, and while, in lesser hands, this would have been mere melodrama, Kadosh instead is a profoundly heartbreaking, yet reverent drama. Highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)