The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong

The scouts

Everyone expects a circumcision story to be either crude shock-value or therapeutic navel-gazing, so naturally Ben-Ari makes something that's neither—a literary essay film that treats bodily trauma like a philosophical inheritance rather than a punchline, which is exactly the kind of premise-subversion that shouldn't work but does.

Ben-Ari sits firmly in the lineage of the personal essay film—Agnès Varda, Chris Marker—where intellectual rigor and intimate vulnerability refuse to separate; the formal restraint of letting Shteyngart's voice carry the weight, paired with the precise editing of archival and biographical material, demonstrates a curator's hand at work.

The singular choice here is treating Shteyngart's recitation not as confessional testimony but as a composed literary act—the decision to keep him reading, thinking, narrating rather than performing grief gives the whole 21 minutes an almost austere dignity that transforms what could've been exploitative into something genuinely moving.