Minyan Duty
2022 · 14m · USA
Directed by Ivan Kander
Tones: humorous, melancholic, tender
Two sisters try to say Kaddish for their late mother but find themselves one person short of the ten-adult quorum (a minyan) required for the prayer service. With no options left, they recruit a stranger — a Black food delivery driver — off the street, generating both comedy and quiet emotional resonance.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two sisters short one for a Kaddish minyan, recruit a Black food delivery driver. The mechanics are specific, the comedy-grief blend is decent, the racial recruitment shtick could go either way.
Kander uses the hyper-specific halakhic minyan requirement as comic engine for grief — the recruitment of a non-Jewish delivery driver as tenth driving both register and resonance. Shiva Baby-adjacent specificity.
14-minute Jewish grief-comedy using the minyan quorum requirement as the comedic engine with non-Jewish food delivery driver as the recruited tenth — that's hyper-specific religious-law mechanics generating both laughs and emotional payoff. Multiple Best Comedy / Best Narrative wins.
Reviews
His most entertaining dialogue... buoyed by two very strong performances from Sarah Baskin and Michelle Uranowitz... his best film yet.
Broaches a fraught topic — how race functions in Jewish spaces in the U.S. — without having anything meaningful to say about it.
Festivals
- DC Shorts Film Festival 2022, Best Narrative Short
- Joyce Forum Jewish Short Film Festival 2022, Best Comedy
- Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival 2022, Audience Award for Best Short
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2022
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2022
- RiverRun International Film Festival 2022
- Maryland Film Festival 2022
- San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2022
- Boston Jewish Film Festival 2022
- Miami Jewish Film Festival 2022