After everything we’ve heard about the Hamas bombing of Israel on October 7, 2023 it’s hard to imagine breaking bread with someone who survived it.
And yet, there was Liat Beinin Atzili, last week, at Serafina restaurant in the theater district. (She was not seeing a show.) If you watch the Oscar shortlisted “Holding Liat,” filmed by her family friend, Brandon Kramer, while Liat was held hostage by Hamas (54 days), you can’t believe it.
The very powerful film — eligible for an Oscar, now playing at New York’s Film Forum and starting Friday in Los Angeles — should be seen by everyone because it humanizes a horrific time that resonates even more today. The triumph of “Holding Liat” — which counts among its producers Darren Aronofsky — is how, under these grim circumstances the film manages to hold in emotional and dramatic proportion all sides of the latest stage of the Middle East conflict.
Liat and her husband Aviv were kidnapped by Hamas from their Kibbutz near Gaza. They’re in their 50s but look younger. They had three adult children and both sets of grandparents. They were the perfect, loving family until this massive tragedy blew them apart.
Liat and Aviv were immediately separated by Hamas after their kidnapping. In short time we learn that Aviv was killed. The family actually visits the blood stained site of his murder.
But we’re skipping ahead.
The main characters here are Liat’s parents: the extraordinary father, Yehuda, and mother, Chaya. As Kramer films them cinema verite style, the couple jumps into action to find their daughter and her husband. They meet with all the press, every politician, and at one point Yehuda travels to Washington DC where he’s shocked to find himself embraced by Gaza-hating right wingers. He has no such enmity. He just wants his daughter back.
When Liat is finally reunited with her family, the first thing she says is “Nothing bad happened to me” — meaning no physical torture. But
was she fed adequately? Could she go to the bathroom in privacy? did they abuse her at all? Liat does not want to say. Rather, her awareness that others were not so lucky is at the forefront of her thoughts, as well as the understanding that she did not have to be held for 54 days, nor did others have to remain for 200 such horrific days; she was simply not the priority of her government.
Did that mean that her captors were humane? Her “luck” is bittersweet. Liat let on that she had the thought: she was not far from her family If only she could write them and the children an email to say she was all right. They could maybe drop her off at a place in Gaza. She could find her way home. These daydreams occupied her. They were Hamas, after all, much younger than she was; they had made their choices.
Filmmaker Brandon Kramer had met this family, when he and his brother Lance, a producer on the film, had gone to Israel on Birthright. When the October massacre occurred, he got in touch to find out how these distant relatives were, not even thinking they would respond. They met up with Yehuda when he came to Washington as part of a delegation to help free the hostages.
The Kramers began the film just hoping to document a family story, but found so much more as the speakers included Yehuda’s brother, Joel, a professor who lives in Portland, Oregon (and has radically different views than his brother). Liat’s younger sister Tal, who moved to Portland, adds her voice. The family becomes a microcosm of differing opinions on Israeli/ Palestinian politics. Brandon Kramer allows the close-ups on Yehuda’s rolling eyes to tell a story itself, recognizing how much his family members are pawns in an emotional drama that sacrificed Israelis and Palestinians alike.
And Liat, despite the recognition that the priorities of those in power do not align with hers, like many hopeful Israelis, works to find a path to peace.– with Roger Friedman
