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“This film is important, but the most important [thing] for us right now is to bring the hostages back home and for the Israel-Middle East conflict to stop as fast as possible,” says Nir Bergman, one of Israel’s most esteemed filmmakers, in a conversation with Variety about his Tallinn competition entry “Pink Lady.”
Bergman, whose credits include the multi-awarded pics “Broken Wings,” Cannes selected “Here We Are” as well as the original Israeli series “BeTipul,” later turned into HBO’s “In Treatment,” has peaceful messages of tolerance and acceptance in many of his works.
His latest drama, “Pink Lady,” running in the official selection of Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival, tackles the topic of hidden sexual desires and homosexuality in an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem.
The story turns on Bati, a young woman seemingly happy with her husband, Lazer, and their three children. However, cracks in their relationship start to appear when Lazer is blackmailed, and Bati soon discovers his secret gay affair with a male study partner.
“To protect her family and keep the man she loves, she supports Lazer as he attempts to ‘cure’ his homosexuality whilst uncovering her true desires,” the logline reads.
Bergman was able to sneak into Jerusalem’s closed ultra-Orthodox environment with the help of debut screenwriter Mindi Ehrlich, winner of Netflix’s 2022 Israeli TV Series Development Award for her project “Insignificant.”
A member of the Hasidic community in Jerusalem, Ehrlich drew from her own experience to write the script. She first discussed the project with Bergman five years ago while studying screenwriting at the Sam Spiegel School of Film & Television, where the latter works as a teacher.
“Mindi had a lot of material and was debating whether to make a feature or series. The project was already great, and I felt it should be a film. Everything was there from the beginning – the love story, extraordinary plot and strong message to the world,” says Bergman, who was subsequently offered to helm the feature.
Ehrlich, the eldest of a privileged and well-known Hasidic family of 10 children, was married to a yeshiva boy when she was 18 and was a mother by 19.
“We were just kids, suddenly thrown into adult life. Sexually, we were immature and financially dependent on our parents. It was hard, but the hardest was that although we were friends, we weren’t a romantic couple; He didn’t see me as a woman, and I didn’t feel desired. That was a huge burden for me that I carried even when I left my marriage. I thought I wasn’t attractive, and it took me a while to reconnect with myself.”
Ehrlich says Bati in the pic is similar to her “in the sense that I felt invisible as a woman,” but other true stories enriched the material. The screenwriter, who admits that until she was 15, she “didn’t even know gay Orthodox existed,” was soon taken by their harrowing stories of discrimination and alienation.
“When I realized how unimaginable it is that gay Orthodox live in a community that offers them no legitimacy, that they live invisible, in deep suffering, and that, in a tragic cycle, this brings pain to the women who love them, making those women invisible too, I knew this film had to be made.”
Pointing at other works set in a similar setting, such as YES TV’s Israeli show “Shtisel” which turned into a global phenomenon once on Netflix, Ehrlich felt “Pink Lady” would bring a fresh take on the ultra-Orthodox circles by focusing on” the most invisible and the most sorrowful people in this society, the ones nobody talks about.”
Bergman adds: “We’ve seen stories of gay Orthodox on screens, but never from the point of view of the woman in the couple. Only Mindi could tell that impossible love story.”
Fully aware of the ‘huge challenge” of bringing the ultra-Orthodox community to life on screens, with their complex rules, beliefs and practices, the director strived not to be didactic.
Another priority for him was “to make the audience fully identify with Bati, to the point of believing, for a moment, that God could change the sexual orientation of her husband. We needed the viewers not to believe that this is possible, but for them to believe that for Bati this is possible,” he notes before condemning gay conversion therapy practices. “It should be banned.”
Keen to remain as authentic as possible and to avoid clichés, Bergman was grateful to Ehrlich’s family, who welcomed him and his crew into their community.
“We went to dinners with ultra-Orthodox families; Uri Blufarb who plays Lazer, traveled with Mindi’s former husband and went to the synagogue with him. Sara von Schwarze met Mindi’s mother to understand the character that she’s based upon, and then Nur Fibak, who plays Bati, went, among other things, to the Mikvah [ritual bath to achieve purification]. “
Shooting on location in Jerusalem’s religious neighborhoods was possible only by using guerrilla filmmaking methods, says Bergman, to avoid raising attention and possible angry reactions from some ultra-Orthodox. “It was hard to convince my producers as two years earlier, they lost two trucks of equipment that were burnt,” Bergman says.
Asked how she believes her own people will react to her feature, Ehrlich, for whom it was essential “to show the beautiful and less beautiful sides of her community,” reiterates that her family supported her in their own way. “But they won’t see the film. I completely understand that and don’t want them to go against their rules and beliefs,” she adds.
Ultimately, in the current context of intolerance and “fear of the other,” says Bergman, his biggest wish with his film “is to share other people’s experiences and to show what is connecting people, not the opposite. And if the film can change one person’s life, then it’ s a win,” he states.
The film was produced by Haim Mecklberg, Estee Yacov-Mecklberg and Marica Stocchi for 2-Team Productions and Rosamont, with United King Films, and RAI Cinema, in association with Paris-based sales outfit MK2.
At the Black Nights Film Festival, running Nov. 8 to 24, “Pink Lady” will compete for eight awards, including the coveted €20,000 ($21,400) Grand Prize for best film.
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