O Despertar da Juventude

It takes a while to get into this subtle, understated film. Exchanges between characters tend to be muted and at times abruptly truncated. This, you gradually come to understand, reflects the closeted world of the main character, David, whose most crucial interchanges are often a matter of a sidelong glance, a touch, amidst the garrulous world of his mother and fellow Jewish emigrés in nineteen eighties Brighton Beach. I was slowly drawn into thus milieu, permeated as it is by memories of the holocaust and ominous references to a disease affecting gay men, and ultimately found it deeply moving.

Minyan

A very Jewish story about a young man coming of age in New York in the 80's.

The script was great and we had some great characterisations, I thought it was a really great movie that breathed in all the right places.

David, played by Samuel H Levine, did a great job, he was very compelling.

I giving this a firm 6 outta 10 for a solid movie all round despite the issues being small.

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

I didn't have high expectations when starting this film, and yet it crept up on me. Expertly crafted, it's a subtle, yet powerful piece. A dark humor runs within it, but I found it illuminating in so many ways- the love, support, idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of family and communities.

A worthwhile watch when you want to be moved by a film.

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.