THE GOLEM

1673. Hannah lives in a Jewish village somewhere in Lithuania. Despite repeated visits to the local quack, she can’t conceive and she starts fearing lest her husband cast her away and take a new wife. But being the smart gal she is, Hannah starts experimenting with magic spells from the kabbalah (esoteric Jewish wisdom). Before long, she conjures up a golem, a readymade son without any need for diapers and all that smelly stuff. In the meantime, the bubonic plague is raging in the surroundings of the secluded village and their Lithuanian neighbors squarely put the blame on the Jews. Things turn sour in no time but then the golem shows what he’s capable of. They’d better not mess with his new-found mama and her loved ones… We know the Paz brothers (Doron en Yoav) for the explosive zombie apocalypse JERUZALEM (BIFFF 2016). This time, they work on a smaller canvas. THE GOLEM, their first English language production, looks like a period drama and the detailed reconstruction of a Jewish shtetl is quite impressive. But make no mistake, beneath the surface this is an unadulterated horror movie! Film buffs who love a good scare with echoes of Frankenstein and other forebears of the genre will know what to do.