The project required extensive groundwork, and many months of involved research and development. “I had a friend, Theresa Breuer, who helped me, and we both sound-boarded ideas, researched them heavily, and then took three trips to Israel together and I took one alone,” Pannack recalls. “My final trip was the most productive, as by then I had a greater idea of what I wanted to shoot and Baruch and I had built a connection.”
Initially Pannack spent time with communities of people breaking away from Orthodox ways of living, but was struggling to find a focus, despite the charisma and warmth of the many people she met. Eventually she was introduced to a young man calling himself Moshe, and their immediate rapport made it clear that Pannack had found a protagonist for her story. Shortly afterwards, he revealed that ‘Moshe’ was an alias; his name was Baruch. “It revealed what a double life he had,” Pannack reflects.