Event

LIGLFF presents The Secrets

8:00 to 11:00 PM
Closing Night Gala

Sponsored by the Kim Schultze of Coldwell Banker and V2 Vodka in the Sky Caf. Music by DJ Ron Soper. MC Madison Mansfield. With special performances by Madison Mansfield, Gina Marie Versace and Bunkhouse Idol Jillian. The reception is free with a movie admission to The Secrets or Whirlwind.

Thursday, November 20 at 7:00 PM
The Secrets
(Avi Nesher, Israel/France, 2007, 120 min)

An intense and complex friendship between two young women studying at a womens religious seminary in Safed, the birthplace of Kabbala. Naomi (Ania Bukstein), a brilliant pious girl whose father is a powerful ultra-orthodox rabbi, finds herself in a crisis when her mother dies and decides to postpone her arranged marriage to her fathers prodigy, Michael. Naomi heads for Safed out of her devotion to religious study. The seminary is presided over by a stern seminary mistress, who desperately wants to further the cause of womens education and equality. At first, Naomi and Michelle (Michal Shtamler), whose wealthy family has sent her to Safed in hopes that she will become more devout, dislike each other profoundly, but they begin to bond after Michelle develops an obsessive interest in Anouk (Fanny Ardant), a beautiful, mysterious older woman living nearby. Anouk is ill, may or may not be Jewish, and may have committed a crime of passion, all of which make her a romantic figure to the two girls. Based on her understanding of kabbalah, Naomi devises a series of tikunim or rituals, which will somehow purify Anouk and purge her of her sins. Anouk enthusiastically participates in these rituals, which stretch the borders of normative Jewish law and so must be kept secret from the seminary mistress. Eventually this journey into the forbidden also leads to a growing attraction between the two girls. Naomi sees their attraction as a way for her to break free from her family, while Michelle, who has enjoyed less stability in her life, is torn between her love for her friend and an attraction to the happy-go-lucky Yankele, a klezmer musician she meets by chance. Winner of Best Feature at Jackson Hole Film Festival.