Menashe Lustig and Ruben Niborski in the film Menashe.Federica Valabrega
The news behind the understated drama Menashe is that it's a rare thing, a film performed in Yiddish, covertly shot in Brooklyn's guarded Hasidic community.
The appeal, though, is that nothing is lost in translation: A soulful schmo is played by Menashe Lustig, a YouTube comedian who is 100-per-cent relatable as a hapless, sombre widower and struggling single father to his young son. He's a Rodney Dangerfield, an Eeyore in a Borsalino hat.
His community dictates that without a good wife and nice dishes, he can not properly raise his son as a proper Hasid. He's in a danger of losing his boy; he needs to get it together. Delicately woven and sensitively told, director-writer Joshua Z Weinstein's ode to a shlemiel rings true.
Brad Wheeler