Sarah Smith | Black Hat / 2019

the two of us

by Douglas Messerli

 

Phillip Guttmann (screenplay), Sarah Smith (director) Black Hat / 2019 [15 minutes]

 

Shmuel (Adam Silver) is a pious Hasidic Jew living in Los Angeles who everyday attends schul everyday as part of a minyan who celebrate the Torah with their Rabbi Ernest (Shelly Kurz).

    The Fairfax Avenue area of Los Angeles, in which supposedly this small synagogue exists (although many do in that area, the scene inside the schul in this movie was filmed Venice), along with a wide range of other small shops and bars, and theaters, including the famed Beverly Cinema (now owned by film director Quentin Tarantino), the cleaners where Shmuel works, a grungy gay bar named the Plaza, and restaurants, as well as the side streets lined with lovely brick and stucco-constructed houses and apartments.

    Leaving the morning ceremony, Shmuel forgets his traditional shtreimel, the black hat of the Ashkenazi sect. The rabbi calls out to him after the ceremony that he has once more left behind his hat, also taking the opportunity to invite Shmuel and his wife Naomi and their child to dinner, Shmuel explaining that his wife and child are in New York visiting her mother, and that he must hurry off to work.

     We suspect, and it is soon confirmed, that Shmuel is suffering from far more than a slight loss of memory, that his distraction has to do with other desires, and as night arrives we see him, dressed in his traditional garb in which he wears in his neighborhood where he might easily be recognized.

     But soon he darts down an alley, changing clothes and hiding his peiyot or more commonly payes, his traditional long sidecurls under a fisherman’s cap. His black coat and hat safely hidden away in a bag, he darts into the bar past a couple of chatting boys outside, one of whom, a black man named Jay (Sebastian Velmont), he clearly finds attractive. Nervously, however, Shmuel makes his way into the bar to be served up a drink by the bartender (Carolyn Michelle), who knows his favorite beer, Rolling Rock, clueing us in that he has become quite a regular.

     Turning around for a moment, he spots another man closer to his own age sitting alone (Bryce McKinney). But Jay soon reenters the place, joining Shmuel at the bar and soon inviting him into the curtained-off back room where it is clear open sex takes place.

     Jay moves off behind the curtain, with Shmuel soon following, the two meeting up with Jay removing his cap, stroking his lover’s payes before gently tucking them behind his ears and moving in for a deep kiss.  

     When Shmuel leaves, we note that when he goes to pick up his waiting bag of clothing, the black hat drops out without him noticing.

     The scene shifts to the next morning with Shmuel in bed, realizing that he has slept beyond his usual time. He quickly dresses and readies himself to hurry off to the synagogue, only to discover that he is missing his shtreimel. Desperately he rushes off the Plaza, but iron bars have been rolled across the doorway, signifying that it is closed.

   He arrives, fairly abashed, to the worship, only to be greeted by another of the minyan, the other conservative-looking man from in the bar the night before, who graciously hands over his hat, which our frightened believer receives with relief and widened-eyes, realizing that he now has a friend within the schul itself.

    When Lutheran-born director Sarah Smith was asked in an interview with Sophie Duncan & Caris Rianne about her experience of incorporating the most traditional of Jewish sects within her movie about gay sex, Smith answered: “It was important to me that we see the complexity in Shmuel’s struggle with who he is as a gay man and his religion, and through his religion, his relationship to G-d. It was also important to me that we not demonize the Hasidic religious beliefs, that we highlight Shmuel’s struggle, but try not to cast blame for his struggle.”

 

     She argues that she hopes the viewer’s of her film come to the realization that the strange outsider that Shmuel represents to many who know little about his religion are in many ways like all of us. 

 

“Through Shmuel’s story we aspire to raise the notion that these often mysterious and misunderstood religious individuals, typically only seen by the outside world on street covered by hats and sheitels, are perhaps more complex—more like us—than we previously imagined. We all, to some extent struggle with our identity, and I think this is something anyone can identify with and ultimately, my hope is we foster empathy and understanding.”

 

Los Angeles, October 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).