Menashe

Menashe is a widower living in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, where tradition does not allow a man to raise a child on his own. After his wife's death, his young son is taken in by a relative, while Menashe works in a neighbourhood grocery and struggles to make ends meet. When his rabbi grants him a week with the boy before the unveiling of his wife's memorial, it becomes his chance to show that he can be a good father within the rules of his community, even as those around him doubt it.

The film was released in 2017 and marked the directing debut of Joshua Z Weinstein, who wrote the screenplay with Alex Lipschultz and Musa Syeed and went on to direct Here I'm Alive. Menashe Lustig, a non-professional actor from the community the story depicts, plays the lead, with Yoel Falkowitz, Josh Alpert, Abraham Bresky, Jorge Cea and Avi Friedman in supporting roles. Shot largely in Yiddish within the world it portrays, it runs 82 minutes.

Made by production companies in Israel, Canada and the United States, the film took about 2 million dollars worldwide, a modest return for an independent drama. Audiences are positive but measured: 6.6 from roughly 2,800 votes on IMDb and 6.3 from a small number on TMDB. Among critics, who reviewed it more than a hundred times, it holds a notably higher 7.5.