When brothers Brandon and Lance Kramer found out their relative Liat Beinin Atzili and her husband Aviv Atzili were taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Oct. 7 attacks, they called Liat’s father Yehuda Beinin.
Beinin, an Olney native and Israeli resident, told the brothers he wasn’t getting a satisfactory response from the Israeli government and that he planned to travel to the U.S. with his other daughter Tal Beinin and grandson Netta Atzili to petition lawmakers there for help in getting the hostages released.
The Kramers saw an opportunity to use their professional talents to provide support.
“Lance and I are documentary filmmakers … and we talked with Yehuda about the idea of documenting some of these first days of what they [the family] are going through, thinking that we would release something very quickly and short that could just help get awareness out about Liat,” Brandon Kramer told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
That short project ended up blossoming into an award-winning, full-length documentary film, “Holding Liat,” focusing on the struggle of the family as they advocated and waited for Liat to come home, and the aftermath of her release during the November 2023 hostage exchange.
The film came to Philadelphia as the centerpiece documentary at the Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media Festival with a screening on Nov. 20.
Brandon Kramer said that during the initial stages of filming, the production team witnessed the three generations of the family navigating the same debates and ideological fractures that families across the world were having around the issue of the conflict.
But the stakes for Lait’s family was life and death, he said.
“We felt that what they were experiencing was so much more complex and nuanced than any of the narratives that were being shared around what the hostage families were going through, and that it was critically important that the public have a documentary to understand the nuanced experiences,” Brandon Kramer said. “A lot of lives are on the line, and a lot of opinions and decisions are being informed by the victims of Oct. 7.”
Yehuda Beinin said his initial impression after a meeting with President Joe Biden shortly after the attacks was that the hostage situation would be resolved relatively quickly, and the film would give Liat and Aviv a record of the family’s experience working to free them.
That picture quickly changed, as it became clear that the conflict, and the hostage situation, was going to drag out. The evolving circumstances played a large part in the film process.
“It’s important to emphasize that the product that developed was not the goal at the outset. It was something that developed entirely organically as events were unfolding, so that the movie was being created in real time,” Yehuda Beinin said.
He said many people involved in the film, including Liat after her return, made difficult decisions in agreeing to open up and be highly vulnerable for the film, and allow it to go forward.
As an example, Yehuda Beinin pointed to a fight between him and his wife, Chaya Beinin, seen in the finished film, as the couple suffered through weeks of bad sleep and extreme stress.
“That’s a really difficult thing to allow us to document. But they understood, to their great credit, that seeing the moments of love and connection is important but also seeing how when you’re under this much stress, it can chip away and strain a family. And the fact that they had the openness and trust to allow these really vulnerable moments to be documented, I think, is why audiences are connecting with them,” Brandon Kramer said.
Another vulnerable situation came after Liat returned home from 54 days in captivity, when she found out a documentary was being made and that Aviv had been killed during the attacks, with his body taken hostage.
The producers weighed filming Aviv’s funeral two days after Liat was freed. Brandon Kramer spoke with Liat the day after she returned and told her if she was comfortable with the funeral being filmed, he would give her the footage and let her decide if it belonged in the documentary.
“She had just had her agency stripped of her, and so it was to give her a lot of agency to determine if and when we would document moments,” he said.
Beyond chronicling the family’s post-Oct. 7 scramble, differing political views and varied opinions on how to win Liat’s freedom, the filmmakers briefly followed Liat and her journey after coming home.
Liat joined the Parents Circle-Families Forum, a group of Palestinian and Israelis who have lost loved ones during the conflict. And at the film’s conclusion she raises a question for Israeli society about grappling with what life is like “on the other side of the fence.”
Yehuda Beinin and Brandon Kramer agreed the film has a real impact on people and will hopefully stimulate important conversation.
“As we turn the corner to Thanksgiving, I think it’s important that the film is allowing a space for a conversation to take place across family members, across communities that have been in paralysis since Oct. 7. That’s one of the biggest impacts I think the film can have, to generate a dialogue that isn’t happening across lines of difference,” Brandon Kramer said.
Excellent article!