[Rama] Burshtein oppressively captures the claustrophobia of a close-knit community where every daily act - from opening a door to eating - is a religious ritual.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 6, 2017

As opposed to the bleak view of sexual subjugation in Kadosh, Amos Gitai's 1999 film about Hasidic marriage, Fill the Void sees Burshtein fortrightly and wittily asserting that this is how her community lives.

| Feb 6, 2014

An intelligent and moving examination of the possibilities of personal freedom within the strict confines of religion and tradition.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 16, 2013

There is perhaps something ultimately undeveloped about it, but the film is a well acted, well presented piece of work.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2013

Fill the Void is as well-versed in the rules of matchmaking as a Jane Austen novel, and it bends them as artfully as wicker.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 12, 2013

Its last five minutes are so extraordinarily enigmatic, you're certain the subject of innocence, guilt and attraction has been addressed on a deep level.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 12, 2013

A nuanced kitchen-sink depiction of an Israeli Hassidic community which zeroes in on the dilemma of an 18-year-old girl named Shira.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2013

Although it lacks a little of the emotional heft of Haifaa al-Mansour's work, it's a well acted and delicately told tale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 9, 2013

This is an extraordinary first film, nerve-tingling in its intensity, and assembled with a finesse and control even the great Austrian director Michael Haneke might envy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 9, 2013

Beautiful and mysterious, the[se] first glimpses are an ideal primer for the Israeli film, which never rushes to spell out the meanings of its subtle and quiet moments.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 30, 2013

Using the advantage of personal familiarity with an insular religious community of Haredi Jews in Tel Aviv, Rama Burshtein has created a small jewel of a narrative.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 19, 2013

It's an artful, character-driven drama that constitutes a minor miracle of empathy.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 11, 2013

Burshtein creates a one-of-a-kind portrait that nonetheless transcends its setting, and even its worldview; the dynamics are global.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 20, 2013

Burshtein has achieved a gripping film without victims or villains, an ambiguous tragedy drawing on universal themes of love and loss, self-sacrifice and self-preservation.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 20, 2013

Director Rama Burshtein's debut is nothing less than astonishing. She's a card-carrying member of Israel's Hared community and, with that experience, has crafted a work of moral complexity and visual artistry

| Jun 14, 2013

[Burshtein] vividly depicts a clannish culture that is likely to feel foreign and perhaps off-putting to generations that came of age in a progressive post-feminist era.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 14, 2013

[Burshtein's] subject is a woman's right to choose her spouse, and what a weighty, giddy, confusing, clarifying and, ultimately, sacred choice that is.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 14, 2013

There's a clotted and cramped feeling to "Fill the Void" that's downright creepy.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 14, 2013

A sympathetic, layered portrayal, rich with detail, that earns its more complex and resonant conclusion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 13, 2013

None of the religious rituals feels particularly spiritual, and even the nominally happy ending fails to alleviate the oppressive tone.

| Jun 13, 2013