Menashe

Director: Joshua Z. Weinstein

Country: USA

Running Time: 82′

London Premiere 

Year: 2017

An eye-opening, humane, wryly-funny trip into Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, Menashe was one of the breakout hits of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Filmed entirely in Yiddish, Joshua Z. Weinstein’s heart-rending drama sees widower Manashe ordered to remarry, or face the possibility of losing custody of his son. Resisting his rabbi’s assertion that “the Torah says a man should not be alone”, he’s determined to take his time to grieve. But his difficulty in hanging on to his job, and his talent for hilarious mishap, doesn’t help his case in a community where everybody seems to be judging your ability to be a ‘real mensch’. A wonderful drama about a little seen community, made all the more powerful for being based on the real life story of leading man Menashe Lustig.