Rabbi Angel stars in “Immoral Souls”

Directed by Silvio Tendler, Immoral Soul is based on Rabbi Nilton Bonder’s bestselling book and acclaimed play (staged for over thirteen years in Brazil) will now come to the big screen as a documentary film. Provocative, poetic and philosophical, the film addresses the need for people to break rules—to transgress— in order to survive and evolve.

The film takes a look at iconoclastic individuals who broke the established order through transgressions, large and small. Interviews are interspersed with dance, choreographed by Debora Colker’s Dance Company.

In the film, Bonder sets out on a journey to Brazil, the United States and Israel in search of these rule-breakers, the so-called “Immoral Souls” and conducts interviews with prominent Jewish transgressors.

The film analyzes biblical passages and myths where individuals transgress in order to break through what is forbidden to arrive, over time, at a new paradigm of what is lawful and appropriate. The individual transgressors in the film serve as role models for greater societal change. “Transgression, which is located in the soul,” explains Bonder, “is the main element capable of renewing life and propelling it to a new level of possibility.”