Eyes Wide Open

Aaron is a devout Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox Jew) who runs a butcher’s shop in an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood in Jerusalem. He has a wife and four children, a questioning mind, and is hardworking and respected. Then he falls in love – with Ezri, a younger man he’s taken on as his assistant. Ezri, expelled from his yeshiva for his wayward sexuality, is known to Aaron’s rabbi.

Aaron is warned off, eventually with the threat of violence, but tries to be loyal to his lover, and his family and community. Small in scale, but, in faithfully presenting the social context and its control of what people are able to do, and even think, this tells a much bigger story.

ML

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