Narrative, 2007
Director: Avi Nesher
France, Israel/ English, French, Hebrew with subtitles
127 minutes
Nominated for 8 Israeli Academy Awards, The Secrets is a powerful, intimate film that follows a journey of self discovery for Naomi (Ania Bokstein), daughter of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi. Naomi is devout and has a true and deep love of the Torah and its study, thriving on learning, discussions, and debates with her father, something they both enjoyed deeply. When faced with giving up her study and independence to marry a man who thinks women are by nature inferior she convinces her father to send her first to an all-female Jewish seminary in Safed, a center of Kabbalistic story.
There she encounters a free-spirited fellow student and an ailing foreigner with a mysterious past who seeks her help in purging her sins before her death. Her relationships with each will cause her to further question her place and her future as she is torn between her love of her religion and the cultural interpretation of it that leaves her in a life restricted and inferior because she is a woman.
What is a woman who loves the orthodox version of Judaism but dreams of not marrying, exploring her sexuality, and becoming a rabbi to do?
This film takes an intense, enthralling, and controversial look at the place of women and sexuality in Orthodox Judaism
Lucy Cruell