I want to know

Boys who spend every day, from morning to night, buried in scripture. Throughout their school years, they will learn only to read and interpret the Divine law written in the time of Moses. Little girls whose future has been decided for them: they will be wives and mothers. They will never attend university, and in any case they apparently have no desire to go. University is a place full of temptations, impure people, profane books. Is this Afghanistan? Iran? No. They are living in democracies: ours; that of our neighbour, the standard bearer for democracy, the United States; and the country that boasts of being the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. And now these boys and girls, who grew up in Orthodox Jewish communities, are adults. They want to know why they did not receive any secular education. They accuse these countries of allowing them to grow up in enclaves where the great democratic value behind so many foreign wars was never honoured: freedom. The freedom to think, the freedom to learn. This film follows the story of Quebecer Yohanan Lowen. He is the first person to sue the government for failing to meet its educational obligations. The film looks at other people around the world who, like Yohanan, are fighting for reparations for previous generations and justice for those to come. The film echoes these young people’s outcry against indifference.