A-Men
2024 · 5m · USA
Directed by Ava Burka
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, provocative
A young Jewish woman methodically sleeps with a series of Catholic men as a form of escapism and finds herself forgetting the words to the Mourner's Kaddish along the way. A fourth-wall-breaking dramedy about grief, sex, and religious identity.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
She sleeps with Catholic men and forgets the Kaddish — and makes a whole film breaking the fourth wall about it. The title pun lands harder once you know the premise.
Fleabag's confessional structure aimed at Jewish mourning and Catholic sexual tourism — Burka writing/directing/starring at five-and-a-half minutes is either electric or insufferable, and the Mourner's Kaddish hook suggests she's after something genuinely felt.
Five minutes, fourth wall breaks, Burka writing/directing/starring — the Catholic-tourism-while-forgetting-Kaddish premise has real specificity, but the brevity is what makes the conceit land instead of curdle.