Wall

Moran Ifergan, a 32-year-old filmmaker who grew up ultra-Orthodox and is now secular, says she also inhabits a strange middle ground that has brought turbulence to her personal life, but depth and clarity to her filmmaking. Her film, “The Wall,” explores the spirituality surrounding Israel’s sacred Western Wall, known to many Jewish pilgrims as the Wailing Wall.

“When I was religious, the Western Wall was like a second home,” she says. “When I left religion, I also had to leave the Western Wall, so when I go there now, it’s like (two places). I can see myself in the religious women there, but it’s not me — it’s the woman I could have been.”

“The Wall” won the best film award at the 2017 DocAviv Festival, where the judges described it as “a film that investigates the tension between what is expected of us and what we want in life. It’s a film about a woman, a family, gender roles and the ways in which cultural, moral and religious conditioning dictate our lives.”