An exceptional, moving performance all the way around. Every aspect exuded excellence yet this is a film that isn't for everyone. Deep dive into an ethnic that most of us only very slightly know and even fewer understand without being one of them. It's one of those rare glimpses into the unknown and still one can never thoroughly understand unless it is YOUR story.
I can not imagine y'all watching it. Painfully slow but so exacting in every detail. Beautiful in the extreme when it explores things you are familiar with, but mystifying in the unknown pieces of those lives and loves.
And the soundtrack featuring clarinetist David Krakauer takes you on a wild ride to heaven and back. Just took my breath away...
Minyan
2020
Drama
Minyan
2020
Drama
Plot summary
In rapidly changing New York of the 1980s, a Russian Jewish teenager wrestles with his identity, faith, and sexuality, all of which seem irreconcilable until he befriends two closeted men in his grandfather's senior housing complex. MINYAN is a tender portrait of self-discovery set in a rapidly changing 1980s New York. David is a 17-year-old yeshiva student living in Brooklyn with his Russian Jewish immigrant family: an overbearing mother and an abusive father. Though he has tender relationships with the senior citizens around him - a doting grandfather and a pair of elderly closeted Jewish men - David is stifled by the constraints of his conservative religious community. He seeks solace in James Baldwin books, nips of vodka, and eventually an East Village gay bar and the dashing bartender who works there. As David experiences a sexual and spiritual awakening, he begins to confront his intersecting identities as immigrant, Jew, and homosexual.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Chris Perfetti as Eric
Mark Margolis as Itzik
Brooke Bloom as Rachel
Richard Topol as Zalman
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 1.06 GB
1280*534
English 2.0
NR
Movie Reviews
Reviewed by
NOT my story, but my story still
Reviewed by
Jewish Coming of Age
David is trying to find his way as a young Jewish man in NYC - and bumps up against both the traditional and the unaccepted. His older neighbors break the mold he's always known...but the relational ties in the film don't quite get as deep as they need to be.
Reviewed by
A brilliant 80's coming of age tale
Sensitive and uplifting, director Eric Steel's coming-of-age sexy drama won the Best U.S. Narrative Feature Prize at Outfest. Channeling the obstacles of growing up gay in a conservative Russian-Jewish community in 1980's Brooklyn, it brings a career-changing performance by Broadway's The Inheritance's Samuel H. Levine, in the role of the rabbinical student David, a teen struggling with hormones and family expectations. A beautiful portrait of a Brighton Beach boy exploring his sexuality, identity and culture, as well as a rich meditation on generational values (he's educated by his grandfather and other local elders),Steel conceived a powerfully perceptive debut.