In the upcoming film “Holy Rollers,” rapper Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, born Jonathan Davis) of the critically acclaimed group A Tribe Called Quest, will be starring as an Ethiopian drug dealer known as Ephraim in the movie.
Set in 1999, “Holy Rollers” follows the journey of a young Hasidic Jew, Sam Gold, from an Orthodox Brooklyn community who innocently gets lured into the world of ecstasy drug trafficking by a friend, Barak Zimmerman, with ties to Jackie Solomon, an Israeli drug dealer. Story is inspired by actual events in the 1990’s when Hasidim were recruited as mules to smuggle drugs into the United States. ~ IMDB
The movie “Holy Rollers” was directed by Kevin Tyler Asch and written by Antonio Macia.
How to make a movie.
Not to be confused with this film:
Holy Rollers
Year: 2000
Production Company: Flaming Star Films Pty Ltd
Producer: Sharyn Prentice more credits
Director: Rosie Jones more credits
Writer: Paul M. Davies & Rosie Jones
International Sales: Screen Australia
Status: Completed
Duration: 52 mins
Cast: Suzi Rosedale
Religious faith, the tourist dollar and Middle Eastern politics intersect in Holy Rollers, as tour guide Suzi Rosedale leads busloads of Christian pilgrims on their trip-of-a-lifetime around the Holy Land. These are people searching for a spiritual transformation, but as they follow 'in the footsteps of Jesus' from his birthplace in Bethlehem to the site of his crucifixion, it's impossible to ignore the modern reality of life in this fractured land.
More:
Monday afternoon at Marquee nightclub isn't exactly the setting you'd expect to see two Hasidic Jews, clad in kippahs and tzitzit (tassels), discussing how they'll import thousands of pills of Ecstasy to New York City with the help of a Russian drug kingpin.
It's a scene being filmed for "Holy Rollers," a movie that tells the tale of two Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn who get ensnared in, and eventually enraptured with, a global Ecstasy smuggling ring in the late 1990s.
Based on true events, the film is the brainchild of actor and nightlife figure Danny A. Abeckaser..."It was about Interpol's fight on drugs, and this story about the Hasidic Jews smuggling drugs jumped out at me," he says. "I've always wanted to make a movie my whole life, and this seemed perfect."
Realizing that "drug movies are largely boring," Abeckaser set out five years ago to make a character-driven film, through the eyes of a young Hasid smuggler.
Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha - cast in the respective main roles of Sam Gold and Yosef Zimmerman - move about Marquee, Abeckaser eyes the set with pride.
"The story we ended up with is incredible because it's told through Sam's eyes. His struggles are against his beliefs and his values, religiously," says Abeckaser. "He's so virgin because the sect is so closed off in real life. They don't even look at women, they have arranged marriages; there's never even dates, so when Sam has a love interest in the film, it's out of the norm for him."
..."The mysterious world that is the Hasidic community," says Bartha, "has a lot of fascinating characters." Still, though many in the cast and crew are Jewish, elements of Hasidic culture were unfamiliar to the actors. "Being the Jew I am, it was important to me that people don't think this is a movie that projects Jews in a bad way," Abeckaser explains.
..."I had my own personal connections to this story, being a reformed Jew from Great Neck, N.Y.," says director Kevin Asch. [my wife is from Gt. Neck] "This world was so different to me, but the film is about faith versus blind faith. If you're born into something you blindly believe in, are you allowed to question it? It's a great debate."
Writer Antonio Macia wanted to pen a script about "how people slowly compromise their faith and upbringings...Whatever religion you are, whatever home, the tenets are the same," Macia, a converted Mormon, says. "It's at the heart of the story, in the relationships, that really make every believer different."
...The real Hasidic drug smugglers took advantage of age-old diamond-smuggling methods in the late '90s.
A few of the infamous:
Queens-based Internet programmer Yaish Malka, living with his pregnant wife and child, was dealing in hundreds of thousands of pills in 2000 when he was arrested by the NYPD on a February night as he fed his infant.
Father-and-son team Gabriel and Amos Elimelech manned one of the largest smuggling rings ever exposed, according to police. With his father's encouragement, Amos brought in 100,000 pills to Israel in a false-bottomed suitcase, before taking them to NYC for distribution. In April 1999, Amos' second trip ended in arrest, and he now rots in an Israeli jail. Gabriel was later busted in NYC and extradited to Israel for his own sentence.
Shimon Levita and Simcha Roth were two Hasidic 18-year-olds instrumental in an international plot, which brought more than a half million pills into JFK Airport. The young criminals were responsible for recruiting other Hasids to fly to Paris to pick up 80,000-plus pills from Amsterdam. The duo was brought to justice in 2000.
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