Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish

Gerhardt Klein Audience Award, Berlin Jewish Film Festival.

"In what might be the first Yiddish “mumblecore” film, Annenberg creates a parallel universe (set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn), where Romeo and Juliet hail from divergent streams of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and speak their lines in street-smart Yiddish. The Bard may have never dreamed of the Montagues as Satmar Jews, but in this magical rendition, the story of feuding Orthodox families is strangely believable and timeless. The director conjures Chabadnicks (Lubavitch) as Capulets; the distinctions are subtle but astute viewers will be tickled by the detail. As they start to “modernize” and act in the archaic play, the young men fall under its rapturous incantation. Annenberg’s meditation on life and love in New York yields a rapprochement between Secular and ultra Orthodox Worlds."

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