Price : NIS15

The Women's Balcony

99 Minutes, 2016
Genre:
Feature

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Directed by: Emil Ben-Shimon
Cast: Evelin Hagoel, Orna Banai, Aviv Alush, Igal Naor, Itzik Cohn
Production:Leon Edery, Moshe Edery, Osnat Handelsman Keren, Talia Kleinhendler
Production Company:United King Films
Photographer: Ziv Berkovic
Language: Hebrew
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Subtitles: Hebrew

Director Emil Ben-Shimon’s film is one of the most successful, highest-grossing Israeli features of the 2010s, with over 300,000 people having watched it in cinemas. When the women’s balcony in a small synagogue in Jerusalem’s Bukharan Quarter collapses during a Bar Mitzvah service, and a parishioner is buried under the rubble, a young charismatic rabbi offers to help refurbish the building and immediately rallies the whole congregation’s support. Soon however, it emerges that the newly refurbished synagogue does not even have a women’s section. The local women rise against the young fundamentalist rabbi and their husbands, all of whom seem to follow him blindly and willingly down the path of religious ultraorthodox extremism.
The film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The original theme, performed by Middle Eastern pop powerhouse, Sarit Hadad, is based on a Jewish-Mizrahi liturgical poem traditionally sung during Bar Mitzvah services, and soon became a hit in the charts. In 2021, a TV series adaptation of the film premiered on local network, Keshet 12.

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