American documentary practice has an unfortunate history of films depicting the disabled or differently abled as a short hop, jump and leap from sentiment to saccharine, yet with the avalanche of nonfiction films of recent years, earnest gems have emerged. “Praying with Lior,” which is tag-lined, “Faith can be simple,” follows three years in the life Lior, a young man whose Philadelphia religious community believes him to be a “spiritual genius” for his great love of prayer. As his bar mitzvah nears, questions of faith and “what is a man” are inevitable. But Ilana Trachtman’s film is never neat, and the obstacles of Lior’s limitations are explored in a fashion both poignant and inedible. I’m swayed somewhat by my youthful exposure to emanations of southern Pentecostalism from variously disabled souls, but the depiction of faith and its difficulties and real-life obstacles is rare, and in the filmmakers’ hands, oft-astonishing. 98m. (Ray Pride)
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