Barren

Southeast US Premiere

Feigi and Naftali are a young, childless, Hasidic couple living with Naftali’s parents in Tzfat. When Naftali travels to Ukraine over Rosh Hashanah to pray for a child, a charismatic rabbi who claims to have healing powers is invited to stay with the family. Taking advantage of Feigi’s trust and desire for a child, he convinces her to undergo ‘barren treatment,’ with sinister consequences. Beautifully photographed and acted, this graceful and compelling Israeli drama presents the society in which the couple lives as complex and multifaceted, in contrast to the often-used approach that portrays religious life as uniformly repressive.