One thing is surprising about this film. The ease and openness with which people express themselves about their experiences of rape. Menahem himself for one, but several other men as well, some encountered during the shoot, sometimes even by chance, men who asked to be filmed, who took the director’s hand and said "come, you will film me". A bit like Menahem, who insisted for months, asking Zauberman, "will you shoot this film? Will you shoot it?”

Even more striking is that some men speak very frankly about the assaults that they themselves have committed against children, after having suffered abuse themselves. Highlighting the darkness at the root of the harm in question, the film explores what one of these men names: that by committing abuse, in turn, he who has suffered abuse feels that he is now in a position of power and somehow, finally, invincible, untouchable. This vicious cycle from which they long to free themselves is achieved by speaking out, by breaking the silence. 

At the same time, we enter a community that is difficult to enter into: the director had to speak Yiddish, to begin with, in order to achieve this, as this is the language of everyday life in the community of Bnei Brak, a place in which Hebrew is considered a sacred language that must not be spoken for quotidian matters. At the same time, we gain access to an astonishing, healthy frankness, that of naming oneself a victim without victimizing oneself, of exposing one’s own guilt without condemning oneself.

Gabrielle Ouimet
Tënk's Artistic Director