Holding Liat, a documentary by Brandon Kramer about former hostage Liat Beinin Atzili and her family, won the Berlinale Documentary Award at the 75th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival.
The award was announced in a ceremony on Saturday night.
The film details the struggle of the Beinin-Atzili family after Liat was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Liat Beinin-Atzlili, an American-Israeli born to kibbutznik parents from the US, returned home in the first hostage deal in November 2023, while her partner, Aviv Atzili, was killed. Kramer, a relative of the Beinin family, began chronicling the family’s journey shortly after he heard about the massacre. Much of the film is about how Liat’s father, a left-leaning Israeli, continued to focus on his hope for a peaceful solution to the conflict even as he reached out to leaders all over the world to save his daughter.
Kramer, accepting the award, said, “This isn’t a film that we wanted to make. After our relatives, Liat and Aviv Atzili, were taken from their home on October 7, my brother Lance and I felt a responsibility to pick up the camera and document the family’s unique experience. We witnessed up close a family wrestling with different points of view on how to return their loved ones, hold onto their values, and seek a more peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians. In a complicated and polarized moment, telling a nuanced story about one family, navigating their differences, their grief, and their empathy felt universal and urgent to share. Documentaries can help us find each other’s humanity and the shared language of cinema can contribute to peace.”
The movie received a standing ovation at its screening, which took place in the presence of the filmmakers and the Beinin-Atzili family. Among the film’s producers is the director Darren Aronofsky, who made such films as Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream.
Hostage crisis
Holding Liat was one of two documentaries in the Berlinale about the hostage crisis. The other was Tom Shoval’s Letter to David, about hostage David Cunio, who starred in Shoval’s first feature film, Youth, which was shown in 2013 at the Berlinale.
The inclusion of these two documentaries sent a message that the Berlinale had not forgotten the hostages or the way in which the current war between Hamas and Israel began. The festival’s new director, Tricia Tuttle, joined a red-carpet vigil for the hostages on opening night organized by German actors. This was in contrast to last year’s festival, when no films or demonstrations referenced the hostages and multiple winners at the prize ceremony, among them the directors of No Other Land, a documentary about the West Bank, accused Israel of genocide and apartheid.
The winner of the Golden Bear, the prize in the festival’s main competition, was Dreams (Sex Love) by Dag Johan Haugerud, a Norwegian film. Andrew Scott won Best Supporting Performance for his role as Jewish composer Richard Rodgers in Blue Moon, a movie by Richard Linklater about Lorenz Hart and other composers.