Henry Bean

The Believer

Henry Bean

• 2001 Sundance grand jury
• Score: 10.51

With The Believer, his first film as director, screenwriter Henry Bean wastes no time in going for the jugular. In the opening scene a timid Yeshiva student is chased off a New York subway train, racially abused and savagely beaten up by a ranting skinhead, and from then on in the level of hatred and violence rarely abates. But the passion that fuels the film is as much psychological as physical. The skinhead Danny Balint is the film’s protagonist, and his anti-Semitic venom has an unusual cause: he’s Jewish himself.