Mazel Tov

Argentinean actor and director Adrián Suar has made an alternately touching and raucous drama about the fragility of family ties and the importance of tradition with his engrossing Mazel Tov. Suar stars as Dario Roitman, who decides to make the trip from the U.S. back to his hometown in Argentina to attend both his sister’s wedding and his niece’s Bat Mitzvah; yet just as he’s about to board the plane he finds out that his father has died. Because Dario has been estranged from his dad and brothers, this creates considerable complications, leading to emotional reckonings that will either threaten to break the family apart or heal long-standing wounds. Suar’s film is a quintessential story of familial dysfunction told with a healthy dose of humor.