Like all Israeli directors releasing movies during the war, Erez Tadmor wondered if this was the right time to bring Matchmaking 2, the sequel to his popular 2022 movie about dating in the ultra-Orthodox world, to theaters.
But when audiences turned out during the first weekend after its recent release, he was reassured.
“There was a concern that maybe people wouldn’t come, that they would be too afraid to go to the movies. But there really isn’t anything to be afraid of. Movie theater auditoriums are one big bomb shelter. You sit there for two hours. If there is a missile alert, you can sit in this comfortable seat and it’s air-conditioned and there’s popcorn. And maybe you’ll even see a movie you enjoy.”
Matchmaking 2 is a movie that many audiences are likely to enjoy. While the first Matchmaking focused on Moti (Amit Rahav), an Ashkenazi who falls for a Mizrahi girl, Nechama (Liana Ayoun), the new film centers on Baruch (Maor Schwietzer), who had a supporting role in the original.
“Baruch, who is still single at 28, is seen as really old among the haredim,” said Tadmor. “The period from about age 22-28 is really critical... When I was 28, I didn’t think about marriage. Who thinks about it at that age in the secular world? But in the haredi world, at that age, you’re supposed to be married, with a five-year-old. And better yet, with a few kids.”
Suddenly Baruch falls head-over-heels in love with Shira (Omer Nudelman), the daughter of Malki (Irit Kaplan), the matchmaker for whom he does odd jobs. They have the ultimate religious rom-com meet-cute moment: They are forced to spend the Sabbath together when he picks her up at the airport on a Friday afternoon and he can’t get a cab home.
She is considered way out of his league by Malki and the rest of society, but he tries his best to win her. Other key characters in the movie are a baker played by Schwietzer’s real-life wife, Niv Sultan of the series Tehran, and a paramedic and ambulance driver portrayed by Noam Imber, who starred in Nir Bergman’s Here We Are.
Tadmor, who is not observant, developed the movie with his co-screenwriters, Hava Divon, who was one of the creators of the beloved television series about national-religious young people, Srugim, and Yaki Reisner, a producer/writer/businessman who has a small role in the movie, who is from a Litvak ultra-Orthodox family in Bnei Brak.
Tadmor explains the process
“The three of us are a great screenwriting team. We divide up the work and each one brings their own experience. Yaki says what the characters would do, what they wouldn’t do,” he said.
Tadmor is one of Israel’s most successful and prolific directors. In addition to Matchmaking, he has made such diverse films as Strangers, about a romance between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man in Europe, which was co-directed by Guy Nattiv; A Matter of Size, co-directed by Sharon Maymon, about Israelis who become sumo wrestlers; and The Art of Waiting, about a young couple coping with fertility problems. In late 2023, his movie about a group home for orphans in Tel Aviv, Children of Nobody, was released, and he has completed another film, Soda, starring Rotem Sela and Lior Raz, that will be taking part soon in a prominent festival that he can’t announce the name of yet. Soda is based on the experiences of Tadmor’s grandfather, who was a partisan in Europe during World War II and then moved to Tel Aviv.
He said he didn’t plan on making a sequel to Matchmaking initially, but couldn’t let go of the very relatable character of Baruch, and the result is a rare sequel that has garnered better reviews than the original.
The two movies are very different in tone. “It’s like with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Baruch is Saul,” he said.
“You have to love a guy like Baruch when he falls hopelessly, crazily in love,” said Tadmor, noting that in one scene, Baruch laments, “I’m not second class, I’m not even third class.”
The movie also deals with the issue of prejudices against people with special needs in the ultra-Orthodox community by introducing a character with Down Syndrome, played by Eliyahu Shaki.
“Maybe a movie like this could help change perceptions of people with special needs in the haredi community,” Tadmor said. “Eliyahu is very talented, he’s very similar to the character he plays.”
The character with Down Syndrome isn’t the only outsider who plays a part in the story. There is also Ahmed (Hitham Omari), an Israeli Arab who works in the kitchen of the yeshiva, to whom Baruch turns for advice. Ahmed was also a character in the first movie, and his inclusion is based on the fact that “just about every yeshiva has an Israeli Arab working in the kitchen and he gets to know all the secrets and all the stories of everyone,” Tadmor said.
“The rabbis come and go, the students come and go, but the Arab guy in the kitchen stays around, just like Baruch stays around, that’s why they know each other so well... He gives the best advice because he knows so much about everything... Hitham is a great actor, he used to be a news cameraman and he became an actor. He’s had leading roles in movies from Jordan, Lebanon, Europe, and even in Israel,” including Sand Storm.
While some haredim gave the filmmakers a hard time initially when they started shooting the film, the first movie won hearts and minds in that community, even though most ultra-Orthodox generally don’t go to the movies, Tadmor said.
“If you go to Bnei Brak with Amit Rahav or Maor Schwietzer, everybody will recognize them,” he said. “Some people went to the movies for the first time in their lives, people who weren’t young, to see Matchmaking.”
He hopes this trend will continue. “Both of the movies aren’t vulgar, they’re modest, you don’t see men and women touching, there isn’t cursing. They are suited to the haredi audience, they’re just for people to have fun... There are some haredi people who will never go the movies no matter what, there’s nothing you can do. But people saw the movie somehow on social networks, they downloaded it, I don’t know. On Matchmaking 2, when we needed an event hall, for a scene, we went to a very well-known one in Bnei Brak, and people asked, us, ‘Nu, do they get married in the end?’ Somehow they had all seen Matchmaking, and not just one time.”
But he understands that most of the audience for the movie will be secular. He said he was happy that the setting means that, “It will transport them to a different world... You identify with the hero, and that can mean you will see the world differently... That’s the strength of cinema.”