The Unkosher Truth (2006)

Directed by: Chana Zalis | 35 minutes | documentary

‘The Unkosher Truth’ is a documentary wrapped in a home video. However, the apparently spontaneous film about the pathetic girl Chana who, thanks to the film, eventually manages to create a bond with her father, is very skillfully put together. The film begins with footage of Chana’s father David busy packing his things. Together with Chana, he travels through America, including an American army base where he can pay his last respects to fallen soldiers and past his old hometown where he bursts out sobbing when he sees his old school again. Eventually he will end up alone with Chana in a boat in the middle of a lake where the film reaches its climax. At the lake, Chana finally confesses her “non-kosher truth”: she has a non-Jewish boyfriend. The father reacts resignedly. Long before this revelation, we get to know him as an arrogant, self-righteous man who let go of the bond with his daughter years ago. Although it sometimes even seems that he never had a relationship with her. After bursting into tears after seeing his old school, he casually says to his daughter, “I can’t remember you as a child.”

Also, the complacency is there with David from the first scene. He is busy packing his suitcase and at the same time talking proudly about a card he received from someone at the church. Later, after speaking at the army base, he asks his daughter if she realized that her father was on a higher level than the other people there. Narcissism in its purest form. It’s nice how the makers of the film have created a home video, but at the same time have put a lot of tension and pace into it, so that the film never gets boring. This is partly due to the laughableness of father David’s idiotic behavior, of course.

The story is very personal, and although the camera is occasionally wielded by the father, this is clearly Chana’s story. It is her film from start to finish, her obsession with her insufferably dominant, but also childishly selfish father. In that sense, the very short and forced-appearing happy ending in the film is probably mainly a therapeutic process for Chana to forgive her father. This one, however, does the film way too short. With the exception of the end, what the film brings is an intimate, but tightly directed portrait of a Jewish fundamentalist and his modern daughter. It’s a shame that the creators are trying to mislead the viewer with a collision that actually happened many years before. To top it off, they even try to add a happy ending. That’s the non-kosher truth of the movie.