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LAST SHABBAT

DERNIER SHABBAT

JLFILMSPRODUCT - as PROD / FIN

Jewish - Completed 2023

Between traditions, modernity, buried secrets and unexpected revelations, Esther and her children are preparing to experience the last Shabbat which will seal their destiny.

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- Jewish, Family, Comedy
- Countries
- FRANCE
- Languages
- FRENCH
- Budget
- 0.6 - 1 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- ISAN
- 0000-0006-F835-0000-9-0000-0000-A
- Synopsis
- According to one of the laws of Halakha, Hebrew law, only Jewish women may bear Jewish children, regardless of the father's religion. Thus, this law systematically excludes children born to non-Jewish mothers, even if the father is Jewish.
  
  The story takes place in Paris, before the pandemic, on a Friday evening, Shabbat, in the apartment of a recently deceased Jewish grandmother of Sephardic origin.
  
  With her apartment due to be vacated, all the characters gather there, as usual every Friday evening, to celebrate one last Shabbat in that apartment.
  
  This major event brings together the grandmother's two surviving children. There is a son, Rabbi Samuel, who is visiting Paris for the occasion, an influential and highly respected rabbi in the community, and his daughter Esther with her seven children, a mix of believers and secularists, practicing and non-practicing.
  
  Esther is a widow. She has two daughters and five sons. Her two daughters-in-law are Christian and have therefore produced four children, all non-Jewish.
  
  This beautiful evening unfolds in a warm atmosphere, typical of Sephardic family gatherings, enhanced by flashbacks depicting the characters drawn to the temptations of modern life, in contradiction with their desire to preserve ancestral customs and, above all, in total contradiction with the intransigence of the rabbis.
  
  As the evening progresses, the flashbacks gradually reveal the suffering of the boys in this family, torn between their love for their non-Jewish partners and the obscurantism of the religious leaders who systematically reject their children. Doubt also invades the girls, who are supposed to be the progenitors of the future and therefore of the survival of the Jewish people. They are also confronted with the pressure of their culture, which forces them never to deviate from their religion.
  
  ETHAN, our main character, an IDF officer, is on leave in Paris. This is the common thread running through these flashbacks, depicting the characters' understanding of anti-Semitism, the rejection of their wives and children by their own community, their fears in the face of the growing number of those who hate them, and the fear of seeing their people no longer able to defend themselves and gradually fade away, at the risk of disappearing.
  
  At the end of the evening, a surprising and unexpected discovery will make this Sabbath, for the members of Esther's family, their last Sabbath...