Matchmaking

The Edward S. Finkelstein Harrisburg Jewish Film Festival

Comedy (Israel, 2022, 98 mins, Hebrew w/ subtitles)

Screenplay by Erez Tadmor, Hava Divon & Yaki Reisner; Directed by Erez Tadmor

It’s time for Moti Bernstein – handsome, smart, an ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi from a “good

family” – to get married. With two matchmakers and two determined parents on the lookout, it

would seem an easy task to find his perfect match. And it might have been, had Moti not fallen

for the one woman he can never have – his sister’s friend Nechama, whose Moroccan Mizrahi

roots make her as unthinkable to Moti’s parents as a bride for their perfect son as Juliet was for

Romeo. Caught between his own desire and the taboos of such an “intermarriage,” Moti is

forced to take drastic action. As a review in The Times of Israel remarked of the story, “The ultra-

Orthodox may take their matchmaking seriously, but love is love…”