It’s a frank and moving exploration of family, faith and the conflict between cultures and generations. This doc follows his attempts to reconnect with the people he left behind.įilmed between LGBT-friendly London, with performances from the choir, and Israel, amidst the anger, confusion and upset he left behind, ‘Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?’ deals sensitively with blame, acceptance and the enormous power of empathy. Without family to turn to he found support, friendship and acceptance in the London Gay Men’s Chorus, but still he feels the gravitational pull of home. In the years since he ran away from his conservative and deeply religious family, Saar has fallen in love, had his heart broken, struggled, made mistakes and been diagnosed with HIV. Saar is gay and has been living in London for the last 17 years after being kicked off a Kibbutz in Israel. It’s most overridingly a portrait of Saar and as such has as much joy and friendship in it as it has melancholy or regret.‘Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?’ isn’t just the title of this moving, intimate doc it’s also the question that 39-year-old Saar Maoz is trying to answer. That feels appropriate because this is not a film about Judaism, or nationality, or even about sexuality or the burden of living with a stigmatized disease. Saar’s visit home may partially take place at the war memorial where his father, a proud paratrooper, still guides tours, but the ideals of patriotism and national service here are mostly delivered in the abstract, as are those of Jewish piety and religious observance. The Heymanns do not try to make any sweeping political points. The contradictions of family, and the complex choreography of love, disappointment, loyalty and betrayal, are felt in almost every interaction Saar has with them. Yet afterward, when she is crying and embracing him, he sneakily gives the sizzling pancakes a stir to make sure they don’t burn. In one of the most moving scenes, Saar reacts with horror when he cuts himself while grating potatoes to make latkes with his visiting mother.
There are certain moments when a clever edit or a visual echo suggests a symbolic parallel between the old life and the new - his somewhat reluctant participation in the Jewish practice of tefillin, in which a leather strap is wound seven times around the left arm, follows close after we’re shown the medical procedures of measuring blood pressure and drawing blood, which also require such binding. This film provides a sensitive, humorous and charming record of how the now forty-year-old protagonist and his estranged.
It’s the telling details that the camera picks up that give it texture: the kosher pot noodles that are all his mother will eat when she visits London restaurants the rosary Saar has to use as a prop during singing practice at one point the gay anthems the choir sings that punctuate the film’s heavier moments with bursts of color and happy noise. The doc is a little uninspired formally but tells its story with clear-eyed compassion, and what it lacks in elegant compositions it makes up for in the all-access frankness that the filmmakers get from Saar and his far-off family members. The surprise of the Heymanns’ documentary is that although the issues it tackles are troublesome and heartsore, the film is anything but morose, as though it emanates from the engaging Saar himself, like a song. Week-by-week music charts, peak chart positions and airplay stats.
Whether it’s his sister’s fear that he could inadvertently infect one of the children his mother’s grief at their separation and the likely shortening of his life span or Saar’s own deeply ingrained shame at the “karma” of having contracted the disease (which happened during a drug-and-sex bender following a failed relationship), his HIV-positive status is a burden three times over: physically, spiritually and psychologically. Who’s Gonna Love Me Now by Cold War Kids chart history on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and YouTube. For the latter especially, Saar’s sexuality has been difficult to accept for all the others his disease is the hardest thing to come to terms with. He has built himself a good and happy life, but it is far away from the family, traditions and home whose tidal pull he has never stopped feeling.Īt 21, he was expelled from the kibbutz that is still home to four generations of Moazes, including his six younger siblings, devoutly religious mother and militaristic, patriotic father. He is also HIV-positive and experiencing all the challenges not only of his illness but also of his long-term expat status. Now around 40, Saar Moaz is a genial, charming, gay Israeli who has for years been a central member of the London Gay Men’s Chorus. Blood is thicker than water, but blood is also the problem that flows through the veins of Barak and Tomar Heymann’s sincere, moving documentary that won the Panorama Audience Award in Berlin.
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