Synopsis
Shot in Tel-Aviv, this documentary is about Jews who were raised Ultra-Orthodox and then made the choice to become secular. For most of them, this decision meant severing ties with their families and communities and setting out alone to find their footing in an unfamiliar society.
A word from Tënk
Pork and Milk, Valérie Mréjen’s debut documentary, meets people who’ve decided to become “yotset besheila”, (apostate Jews). There’s the young man whose parents spied on him and caught him smoking and watching TV. There’s the man who, a few years after cutting himself off from his family, was joined by two of his sisters. There’s the father who, considered a “spiritual threat”, no longer gets to see some of his children. Whether speaking in secret or openly, they all express the twofold taboo or twofold renunciation resulting from their decision (that echoes those who touch pork and milk): turning their back on their religion also means becoming untouchable and severing ties with family and religious friends. With its formal restraint, alternating accounts to the camera and shots of Tel Aviv, this film is all the more powerful for the way it conveys the intensity of these intimate stories – by making them visible.
Caroline Châtelet
Journalist and critic
