Beyond the Fear

In 2005, Israeli scholar and divorced mother of four Larisa Trembovler married Yigal Amir, the infamous assassin of much-loved Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 2007, after a series of conjugal visits granted them during his life sentence, she gave birth to her fifth child, Amir’s son. It is this son whom the filmmakers skillfully build the film around as they reexamine the years of moral complexities surrounding his parents’ union. Latvian filmmaker Herz Frank (Flashback, Ten Minutes Older) began documenting their story 10 years ago before bringing on Maria Kravchenko to take over as his health faltered (he passed away in 2013). The son of an assassin and the woman who loves him is enough of a hook, but what makes the story riveting beyond the scandalous family drama is the documentary’s indecision about what kind of story it is. Frank’s signature approach, a kind of pattern of intimate family moments and politically charged archival footage, constantly asks what this family’s relationship is with the state, its larger history and that history’s moral groundwork. The results make for a rattling but riveting film. —Neha Talreja