Early on, it was clear the Beinin-Atzili family was not like the other hostage families, filmmaker Brandon Kramer, director of the new award-winning documentary "Holding Liat" said on the Haaretz Podcast.
After learning that his relatives, Liat and Aviv Atzili, had been kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and held hostage by Hamas, and that Liat's father and son were traveling to Washington, D.C. several weeks later with other Israeli-American hostage families to lobby on behalf of their loved ones, Kramer knew he had to document the visit.
As he began to film what would become "Holding Liat" – which won Best Documentary upon its debut at the Berlinale Film Festival, just opened Israel's Doc Aviv Film Festival last week, and is about to make its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival – Kramer noticed that their family's experience "didn't fit neatly into any box."
Yehuda Beinin, Liat's father, was openly calling for peace and reconciliation and opposing the forceful military response the Israeli government was planning - from the start.
At the same time, Kramer explains, "His grandson Netta – who had barely survived the attacks and was traumatized and very angry – and his other daughter, Tal, didn't want to speak about politics at all. So within this one family, we saw a microcosm of the debates and fractures, and we felt we had a responsibility to try to make sense of this moment through this one family's lens."
