Tahara

I saw this at the Israeli film festival in New York City during the summer of 2003.

BE ADVISED: this movie is about female circumcision and it is horrifying.

It takes place in the Middle East, amongst some Bedouins and a naive young lady falls in with a culture for which she just isn't prepared.

I will leave it at that, but I will say that I have a strong stomach yet I still had to go to the lobby for one scene (I came back.) This scene (and another) overwhelms the movie which is too bad because there is some pretty scenery, a nice 60s feel, and one or two decent love scenes (very explicit.) The movie is nice and short but, unfortunately, the filmmakers had a point to make and you are left with nothing afterward except a sick feeling in your stomach and you'll cringe when you think about it for the few days afterward.

You've been warned !!

The film makers of God's Sandbox were obviously trying to make a ridiculous statement here. I won't spoil the story for anyone because you truly need to witness the stupidity of this movie for yourself to understand what I saw. (Save your money and wait for it to show up in the $1.99 rental section of you local video store.) This movie revolves around one horribly graphic scene. I'm still trying to figure out why people would invest money into a film like this. Yes I was shocked, yes I almost threw up. My question is, what was I or any of the other three people in the audience with me supposed to get out of this film? I guess this is the typical attempt for an aspiring writer or director to create a vehicle so they can attempt to go from film festival to film festival showing people how caring they are about atrocities around the world. When the whole idea is to create something that is shocking enough to attract attention. Why not do a movie about decapitating children? That's shocking right? Obviosly there isn't an aspiring film maker out there as tasteless as this one that can raise the money for that script.

Some of the negative reviewers here seem to have too narrow a life experience to appreciate what they are being presented with. After all, not so many people get to experience the sexually charged environment being depicted. The nudity and love scenes in this movie are an essential element in the telling of this story. As for the distressingly controversial part of the story, I wasn't aware of that prior to watching. I was strongly disturbed and affected. I was also extremely grateful to the filmmaker and cast for presenting this extremely important, tragic issue to the world is so artful a manner. The desert scenery is beautiful. The lead female is excellent. Much of the supporting cast seem somewhat amateurish, but work very well in this production.