Ushpizin | Official Movie Site | Picturehouse

Ushpizin | Official Movie Site | Picturehouse

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Looking forward to the release of the DVD sometime this April 2006. Tita Nil and I were blessed to have been invited by Dave and Karen to see the movie premiere at AMC Forum downtown Atwater, Montreal. Dave called CJAD during a call-in segment; the station was giving away either passes to the Auto Show or passes to see the movie USHPIZIN. He chose the latter. Thanks Dave and Karen!!
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Stars Shuli Rand and Michael Bet Sheva Rand. An Israeli drama with humor set in the customarily closed world of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Breslov Hasidim. Moshe and Malli (Malka), a married couple, are suffering through a severe financial crisis and so naturally they pray for help. A Sukkot miracle arrives. Or is it a holy test? Two escaped convicts appear on their doorstep. The film is reportedly the first made by members of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community that is aimed at a general audience. The two stars are a married couple. Probably one o fthe best Israeli films of 2005
Ushpizin means holy visitors/guests in Aramaic
The NYT wrote: The Israeli film "Ushpizin" is groundbreaking on more than one count. It is a rare collaboration between secular and ultra-Orthodox Israelis and one of the first movies filmed in the insular Jerusalem neighborhood Mea Shearim with ultra-Orthodox actors. Its warmhearted vision of marriage among Hasidic Jews is also radically different from the depiction of anguished female subservience to patriarchal authority portrayed in movies like Boaz Yakin's "A Price Above Rubies" and Amos Gitai's "Kadosh." That's because the screenwriter, Shuli Rand, and his wife, Michal Bat Sheva Rand, who play a beleaguered married couple, are themselves ultra-Orthodox. Mr. Rand, who won an Israeli Film Academy Award for his performance, was formerly a secular Jew. With permission from his rabbi, he teamed up with the director, Gidi Dar, an old friend, to make the movie. The Rands' characters, Moshe and Malli Bellanga, are a devout but childless couple struggling to make ends meet. Both are intensely emotional. A robust woman with a temperament as fiery as her husband's, Ms. Rand's Malli may follow the patriarchal rules, but she's the furthest thing from a wilting handmaiden bowing and scraping before her master. "Ushpizin" (the title, roughly translated from Aramaic, means "holy guests" and is pronounced OOSH-piz-in) reflects Mr. Rand's secular-to-Hasidic history by imagining that Moshe's wild past suddenly catches up with him. And the scraps of information revealed about his younger days suggest that he was once a formidable hell-raiser. As the story begins, Moshe and Malli are wringing their hands in anxiety. It's the eve of Sukkot, a seven-day religious holiday celebrating the fall harvest. The Bellangas have neither the money to build a sukkah, a tentlike structure occupied by holiday celebrants during the festivities, nor the money to buy food for the weeklong feast. Both worry that the cause of their poverty is Malli's infertility after five years of marriage, and both pray continuously and loudly for God's help. Lo and behold, miracles arrive. A donation of $1,000 from a yeshiva is slipped under their door, and a friend of Moshe's gives them a sukkah. What appears to be another miracle occurs when Moshe's old friend Eliyahu (Shaul Mizrahi) knocks on their door, accompanied by Yossef (Ilan Ganani), a goofy sidekick with a shaved head. The guests arrive just in time for dinner. Chowing down like famished dogs, they proceed to eat and drink the Bellangas out of house and home. But the hosts are thrilled. The appearance of guests during a holiday celebrating hospitality must be another sign of divine beneficence. And when Eliyahu and Yossef make no signs of leaving, the hosts adjust their thinking and gratefully accept the boorish behavior of the men who came to dinner as a divine test with a reward at the end. .... To outsiders, the Bellangas' blind trust and constant praying make them look like patsies exploited by buffoonish, unscrupulous crooks. To the faithful it is more likely to be taken as a joyful affirmation of unshakable faith, humorously exaggerated, of course, but an affirmation nonetheless.
Born in Haifa, Israel, the director Gidi Dar's filmography includes 1988's The Poet, with Shalom Rand and Moshe Ivgi; 1992's Eddie King, with Shalom Rand, Ronit Elkabets and Eithan Bloom, which was shown at the Locarno Film Festival; 1998's music video, 'Blue & Green,' 1999's Shine, a documentary that was shown at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival and the 2000 Docfest NY; 2001's The Kids from Napoleon Hill, a TV fiction series, which won an Israeli academy award; 2002's The Kids from Napoleon Hill, Part 2, which won an Israeli academy award.