El despertar de la juventud

An exceptional, moving performance all the way around. Every aspect exuded excellence yet this is a film that isn't for everyone. Deep dive into an ethnic that most of us only very slightly know and even fewer understand without being one of them. It's one of those rare glimpses into the unknown and still one can never thoroughly understand unless it is YOUR story.

I can not imagine y'all watching it. Painfully slow but so exacting in every detail. Beautiful in the extreme when it explores things you are familiar with, but mystifying in the unknown pieces of those lives and loves.

And the soundtrack featuring clarinetist David Krakauer takes you on a wild ride to heaven and back. Just took my breath away...

Extraordinary film. Feels completely real. Great cast and directing.

Minyan (2020) was co-written and directed by Eric Steel. It stars Samuel H. Levine as David, a young yeshiva student, who has to come to grips with the fact that he is gay, and the fact that he is not certain that he believes in God.

Sadly, coming out as gay in a traditional family is a problem for many people. The centrality of this problem is reflected in the number of movies about gays coming out. What makes this movie different is the superb acting, and the uncanny rendering of Orthodox Jewish life in Brooklyn in the 1980's.

A minyan is ten men (or ten people) that are required for a full Jewish prayer service. As do people in other religions, Jews pray all the time. But it requires a minyan to bring out the Torah. Part of the plot depends upon the fact that David and his father can make a minyan where they live.

We saw this film as part of Image Out, the excellent Rochester LGBT Film Festival. This isn't a great movie, but I think it's worth seeing. The film has an anemic IMDb rating of 6.7. I thought it was better than that and rated it 8.

This film plods along and you don't really know where it's going, but I felt like the residue of it lingered on me even though it didn't feel like it knew what it wanted. It's a unique - maybe even odd - addition to the queer indie film canon.

Sensitive and uplifting, director Eric Steel's coming-of-age sexy drama won the Best U.S. Narrative Feature Prize at Outfest. Channeling the obstacles of growing up gay in a conservative Russian-Jewish community in 1980's Brooklyn, it brings a career-changing performance by Broadway's The Inheritance's Samuel H. Levine, in the role of the rabbinical student David, a teen struggling with hormones and family expectations. A beautiful portrait of a Brighton Beach boy exploring his sexuality, identity and culture, as well as a rich meditation on generational values (he's educated by his grandfather and other local elders), Steel conceived a powerfully perceptive debut.