The Binding of Itzik
2020 · 18m · United States
Directed by Anika Benkov
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative
A middle-aged Hasidic bookbinder searching for bookbinding materials answers a Craigslist ad and becomes entangled in an intense online BDSM relationship with a stranger.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The premise alone—a Hasidic bookbinder discovering BDSM via Craigslist—is the kind of collision that makes lesser films uncomfortable and this one electric; Benkov swings for something genuinely subversive without winking at the audience, which is rarer than it should be.
There's a formal restraint here that recalls Atom Egoyan's deadpan investigations of intimacy, using the bookbinding craft as both literal and metaphorical throughline with real syntactic precision, though the tonal register strains against the absurdist premise in ways that feel unresolved.
The decision to play the online relationship in real-time text-on-screen rather than voiceover or reconstruction—letting the typography and response lag carry the emotional weight—transforms what could've been gimmicky into something genuinely disarming and specific.