Some connections form quietly, almost accidentally, in spaces where they were never meant to exist. In Ofir Raul Graizer’s The Cakemaker (2017), a café in Berlin becomes the beautiful setting for an unlikely affair that crosses cultural and religious barriers. Thomas (Tim Kalkhof), a soft-spoken baker in Berlin, creates incredible pastries in his small café. When Oren (Roy Miller), a married Israeli businessman, becomes a regular customer during his monthly work trips, their relationship deepens into a love affair built around quiet intimacy and the comforting ritual of baking. But when Oren dies suddenly in a car accident, Thomas is left with a grief he cannot publicly acknowledge — the invisible mourning of the secret lover.
What transforms The Cakemaker from a simple tale of forbidden romance into something more profound is Thomas’s journey to Jerusalem. Seeking a connection to his lost love, he finds work in the café owned by Oren’s widow, Anat (Sarah Adler), without revealing his identity. He asks to work at the café and slowly gains her trust. She is captivated by his humble, hardworking, and generous character, and his German manners seem foreign in the Israeli setting.
When we lose someone we cared for, especially a lover or family member, we want to spend time with the people who feel the same way, grieve in the same way. It’s as if being with them brings back the person we’ve lost a little bit, or maybe some of him or her rubbed off on their family so it’s almost like seeing a part of them again. The unsettling part in this case is that only Thomas knows about his connection to Oren, adding a layer of deception and guilt to the relationship with Anat.
Graizer, in his directorial debut, understands that food carries memory in ways that transcend language and culture. Thomas’s German pastries, rich, precise and crafted with European technique, slowly transform Anat’s struggling café into a must-visit destination. But this success comes with complications that reflect the broader tensions of Israeli society, when Anat’s religious brother-in-law (Zohar Shtrauss) threatens to revoke the café’s kashrut certification because a non-Jew works in the kitchen. Only the viewers know at this point that Thomas is not only a foreign employee but also a former lover, and the film navigates these information gaps well, slowly increasing the tension and irony.
The film’s treatment of grief is equally nuanced. Thomas cannot sit shiva or observe the traditional rituals of mourning; his relationship with Oren existed outside the structures that typically contain and process loss. Instead, he mourns through creation—through the physical act of kneading dough and watching it rise. His pastries become a way of honoring memory through the continuation of life-sustaining work.
What ultimately makes The Cakemaker resonate is its understanding that love and loss transcend the categories we use to organize our lives. Thomas’s journey from Berlin to Jerusalem, from secret lover to almost another family member, suggests that the most profound connections often develop outside conventional frameworks or norms. In a world increasingly defined by division and differences, the film offers a quiet argument for the possibilities that emerge when we open ourselves to unexpected encounters, and how our existence can be mirrored through the eyes of another human being.
Watch the trailer here:
