Red Cow (film)

Benni (Avigail Kovari) is a 17 year old who lives with her father, Yehoshua (Gal Toren), in Silwan, an illegal settlement in East Jerusalem. When a red heifer is born, Yehoshua sees it as a sign of the coming of the Third Temple. Benni is charged with caring for the heifer. When she falls in love with Yael (Moran Rosenblatt), a national service teacher, the close relationship between Benni and Yehoshua begins to crack. As tensions rise, Benni is determined to secure a future for Yael and her.

The film is Barkai Yacov's directorial debut.^[1] In an interview, Barkai Yacov said that the movie was highly personal: She grew up religious, in Beit El, one of the first West Bank settlements, and had a relationship with another young woman in her teens. "The film’s geography, plot and the emotions of its characters are all close to me," she said.^[2]

Red Cow was produced by Itai Tamir and received funding from the New Fund for Film and Television and the Israel Film Fund.^[3]

Israel

Daily newspaper ynet critic Shmulik Duvdevani commended the film for providing a glimpse of an area of Israeli life that is seldom seen in the arts – the religious settlements in the West Bank. He opined, however, that the lesbian story line diminished the film and made it somewhat "expected".^[4] Haaretz critic Nirit Enderman gave the film three out of five stars. She wrote that the film is "refreshing" in that it provides representation to two under-represented groups – lesbians and settlers – but also felt that the youth LGBT romance did not fit in well with the rest of the highly-political film.^[5]

International

In the Hollywood Reporter, Jordan Mintzer found the political aspects of the film downplayed, and the LGBT storyline integral to the drama: "Procuring fine performances from her three leads, Yacov keeps the drama intimate while hinting at the greater issues raised by men like Yehoshua who believe Israel to be a strictly Jewish state, and who are prepared to live in the heart of Palestinian territory in order to prove their point."^[1] Sara Ward, in Screen Daily, praised the actors and the cinematography: "Red Cow... moves between the use of walls, fences and shadows to stress the boundaries surrounding its protagonist, and mirroring her restless fervour in its jittery handheld camerawork. Paired with just the right mood — urgent in tone yet measured in pace — the film vibrates with disarming authenticity as a result."^[6]