Once upon a time there was a war… In the darkness of the night, a young soldier goes AWOL. Tonia, a veteran transsexual in Lisbon’s drag shows, watches the world around her crumble. The competition from younger artists threatens her star status. Under pressure from her young boyfriend Rosário to assume her female identity, the sex change operation that will transform her into a woman, Tonia struggles against her deeply-held religious convictions. If, on the one hand, she wants to be the woman that Rosário so desires, on the other, she knows that before God she can never be that woman. And her son, whom she abandoned when he was a child, now a deserter, comes looking for her. Tonia discovers that she’s ill. To get away from all her troubles she travels to the countryside with Rosário, on the excuse of visiting his brother. Rosário takes the road of his childhood but will never find the right way. Lost, they find themselves in an enchanted forest, a magical world where they come across the enigmatic Maria Bakker and her friend Paula. And that meeting will turn their whole world on its head… (Description courtesy of Cannes Film Festival)

Haim Tabakman’s breathtaking, award winning debut film Eyes Wide Open is a gay love story set in the heart of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Winner of Best Film award at the Palm Springs Film Festival, Eyes Wide Open is a powerful film that the New York Times calls “a quiet and confident debut feature that explores the conflict between sexual desire and religious obligation.”