Holding Liat, directed by Brandon Kramer and produced with Reboot Network members Lance Kramer and cinematographer Yoni Brook, follows the family of Israeli-American Liat Atzili after she and her husband Aviv were taken hostage on October 7th, 2023. As Liat’s father Yehuda Beinin works to secure her release, he refuses to let her captivity be used to justify violence in Gaza, exposing deep emotional and political rifts within the family. We asked Kramer and Brook to join us for a Q&A to dig into the film, which was shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards and named to the Guardian’s list of best movies of 2025. Holding Liat has sparked urgent conversations across continents, cultures and communities, bringing people together at a moment when many are being pulled apart. Read a condensed version of the Q&A. Watch a recording of the full conversation.

Tanya Schevitz, Reboot: Thank you both for being here and for having this conversation with us. We really appreciate it.

Lance Kramer, producer, Holding Liat:
Yeah, thank you so much for having us. We’re really, really excited and honored to be a part of this conversation.

Tanya Schevitz: Congratulations on the film. So I have a bunch of questions and, so I wanted to start with how this film came about. When did you decide to document the experience of the family? And when you made this decision, did you already know about the conflict in politics within the family and the conflict sort of between this family versus some of the other hostage families who may not have felt the same?

Lance Kramer: Sure.So the film, you know, did not exist before October 7th. Unlike some films that might be in development or, you know, have some sort of pre-production process, this happened, this came together right away in the immediate aftermath of October 7th. As you can imagine, the film was an immediate reaction, but our relationships long proceeded October 7th. So Brandon, my brother, who’s the director of the film, and I are distant relatives of Yehuda Chaya and Liat. My cousin was married to Liat’s cousin. They’re actually now divorced, but we met over 20 years ago at their wedding and just fell in love with the family. And, at that wedding, our side of the family grew exponentially by bringing the Beinin-Atzilis into the fold. And, they were Brandon and I’s first introduction to Israel.

So when I first went to Israel over 15 years ago, I stayed on the kibbutz with Yehuda and Chaya. So like, kind of my experience of Israel for the first time was very colored by just their version of it. And then also I wound up moving to Portland, Oregon, shortly thereafter. And I wound up living in Uncle Joey’s basement and played on a softball team with Tal, which was after she left Israel. So it’s all to say that just we had this relationship prior to October 7th. But after Liat was kidnapped, the way that the film came to be was that we wound up reaching out to Yehuda, really just to express our care for the family and just say, you know, is there anything we could do to help? Not really even knowing what that could be in a situation like this.

And really remarkably, Yehuda wanted to talk. So we had started messaging, but then he said, let’s just hop on the phone and talk. And this was a few days after October 7th. And in that conversation, you know, a few different things came to light. Number one was that he was getting a lot of activity and support from the Americans, being a dual citizen of the US and Israel, and almost no response from the Israelis. He was already feeling like the family’s experience of being now a hostage family was radically different from what was being projected on the news on media and social media. So actually their experience as a family was way more complicated than the more reductive kinda representation of hostage families. And as you see in the film, Yehuda was very concerned that their, his daughter and son-in-law’s captivity, could be used as a justification for what ultimately became this horrific violence in Gaza, and already was deeply concerned that their own trauma would be effectively weaponized. And he was already feeling pressure against speaking up against that possibility. And so we felt that there would be meaning in beginning to document the family’s experience, not knowing what that would look like, particularly when Yehuda made the decision to come to DC which is where Brandon and I live, and, try to activate politicians and special interests, and just get more attention to the situation. And, Yehuda was remarkably open to the idea of beginning to document the family’s experience again, not knowing whether it would be a day, a week, a month, a year, but they trusted us to begin to bring a camera into the mix. And then Yoni was the first person that we called, when we had this kind of blessing to bring a camera into the mix. And I’ve known Yoni for over 10 years, and I think he’s one of the most talented filmmakers I know. And because he is really the only person we trusted to go on this journey together with us.

Tanya Schevitz: I’m just wondering, like did you know anything about that conflict in politics within the family and also how it might have juxtaposed with some of the politics of other hostage families and how that all played out?

Lance Kramer: It’s a great question. We knew that they, you know, Yehuda and Chaya are older kibbutzniks and came from this socialist tradition and deeply rooted. I didn’t know that much about, you know, the whole Hashomer Hatzair movement. That’s not a movement that I grew up in. So I had a very, very kind of limited introduction, but, but I had a sense that they were really different than the image of Israelis that I grew up with from my time in Hebrew school, just kind of painting a picture of what Israel was like. They were very different than that. And I also knew Joel’s (Liat’s uncle Joel Beinin, aka Joey) politics from having spent time with him when I lived with him in Oregon. I also studied Middle Eastern history in college. So I had some exposure also to some of his teachings and research.

And I knew (Liat’s sister) Tal and I knew how she had been so frustrated with living in Israel and how she wanted to get away from it all. And I knew that everyone felt really strongly about these things, but also didn’t like to talk about them pre-October 7th. And so, you know, we didn’t know how that would all show up, in the face of this crisis. And I think our kind of curiosity about that was certainly part of what brought us to the table, to the idea of filming. But I don’t think it was actually the main thing because there were just so many questions. You know, there were so many unknowns. We didn’t know at that point whether Liat and Aviv were alive. We didn’t know, you know, again, like whether this would be something that would be resolved in a day, a week, a year.

It was just all unknown. And what we did know was that something very, very historic was happening. It was just, you could feel the weight that this was something that was like cataclysmic. And so just being able to be present in the face of that, and the fact that this family was pulled into the absolute epicenter of this geopolitical crisis and historical moment was profound. And it became apparent really quickly that those disagreements in the family were going to be something very central to explore. One of the first scenes that we wound up filming was that conversation, when Yehuda, Tal and Netta are in a circle and they have that kind of argument together. That was one of the very first things that we filmed. And so the dissonance between family members and generations, you know, showed itself very quickly. And we just thought it was an incredible thing that this was playing out, these kind of different disagreements and fractures within the family. They were having to navigate each other’s respective emotional and political responses. They were also still staying together as a family, and they were welcoming the camera and weren’t like telling the camera to leave. So the combination of all those factors to us was quite rare and, and felt really important to continue following.

Tanya Schevitz: Oh yeah. It felt so powerful in that way because of that conflict, but also how they stayed together and still just really had this focus. Sort of in line with that, how did you decide which parts of the story needed to stay personal and what needed cinematic distance? So exactly what you’re talking about, basically. Like I noticed that you didn’t see Yehuda cry on camera until Liat is back and I thought that was really interesting. Like, as a parent, I feel like I would just be a sobbing mess on the floor the entire time. But he did say, at some point “We need to maintain our ability to function.” And so I wondered if the fact that we didn’t see him cry until the end when she came back was a conscious decision not to show the emotional moments and to focus the film, sort of, or if holding back the emotion was what allowed him to focus and move forward to put all his energy into getting Liat and her husband home? 

Lance Kramer: It’s a great question. I mean, I’ll say what I think, but Yoni, you know, you should weigh in too. I mean, my take on it is that, you know, first of all, Yehuda is a very stoic person. I think most of the family members are very stoic. So that doesn’t mean that they’re not feeling, it’s just that the way they show up is with a lot of stoicism. And, I think Yehuda in particular. I mean, you know, his daughter and his son-in-law were…it was not clear whether they would survive. So he was feeling a lot. The feelings were enormous, but he channeled the intensity of his fear and anxiety and passion through his like politics basically, and his advocacy and activism. And also I think that kind of stoicism of holding it together was a way of just plowing through each of these impossible days.

So that’s what we were seeing play out, and we just tried to represent that. It’s not like he was that way on camera and then crying off in the corner. That’s just how he was. And I think what we felt, what we observed was that when he, you know, effectively broke down, in that scene, which is the Shiva, after the funeral for Aviv, it was just such a powerful moment where that kind of wall almost that he had like built up in itself had, you know, just started to collapse. And, it was just a very powerful moment in his journey and in his character and kind of gave different meaning to the stoicism that you saw earlier, I think.

Yoni Brook, producer, Holding Liat:
I’ll just add that I think the question you’re asking kind of hits at the core of what makes documentary filmmaking such a strange and interesting, cinematic form in the sense that as Lance is saying, Yehuda is who he is, but what gets represented on film is really like a collaboration principally between Yehuda and Brandon (Kramer), the director of the film, myself, if I’m holding the camera, and the sound recordist. There’s like an unspoken collaboration about what is shared in the film so that we’ll go into an edit and decide how to shape the story and when to parse out information, the audience. But that editorial process in a way is happening all along the way as that interplay between the family and the filming team is decided in real time. And so kind of when you watch the film, you can be like, oh, that’s an interesting choice, why it happened this way, why it happened that way. But it’s not as if we had note cards on the wall and said, well, this will be the right time for that to happen. It’s more like an act of, I would say collaboration because whatever gets filmed is not necessarily all of Yehuda’s character or Liat’s character or Tal’s character. It’s just the part that is shared between the film team and those people at that time.

Tanya Schevitz: Great. As we were talking about, you caught these sort of tense and powerful moments in the family, especially at some point between Yehuda and Chaya. They didn’t, they didn’t seem to hold back at all, even with the camera there. And I was wondering, how you were able to get to that level of the fly on the wall. I mean, it’s pretty amazing what you’re capturing, and I was just wondering how. I mean, I know you said you had a 20 year relationship with them, but is that it? Or like, what? How did you get to be that fly on the wall?

Yoni Brook: I’ll, answer it and say that I think it starts with the 20 year relationship, because you don’t get invited into those rooms if there’s not like a deep well of trust, especially like, as Lance was saying, you can’t show up at somebody’s worst time and be like, “Hey, we’re here to make a movie. How does that sound?” You have to come in with trust. And I was at a disadvantage in that I had met everybody at that time. I didn’t know anybody until that moment. So those scenes that you’re describing, between Yehuda and Chaya, were filmed in the middle of the night in Israel where that kibbutz was kind of dislocated, living in temporary housing in a hotel. And those scenes were shot with, like, I was shooting, I was holding the camera and, and Brandon, the director, was doing sound.

That was it. There’s no crew, there’s no saying “action.” Brandon and I had been essentially living with them for weeks before that time, often, you know, sleeping in their house when we could. But in that case, for those scenes, we had a hotel room, but it was like, I don’t know, a quarter mile away. And we didn’t know what was gonna happen every night, whether Liat would come home or not, whether they would hear good news or bad news. So Brandon and I just slept on the floor, not of their hotel room, we wanted to give them some privacy. So we slept in the hallway, outside and all the other families on the floor, they were like, “Oh, yeah, those are just the weirdos who sleep on the floor.” We just kind of projected like that was normal and in that, I think the family understood that we were like in it for the long haul.

We weren’t just in it to like sit them down for interviews and ask them how they were feeling. We rarely asked them anything. We just were with them all the time. And so in that way, we were present for a lot of stuff that never made it in the film. We were helping them out with things that never made it in the film. So it didn’t seem that crazy that we were in the room with them when they were having heated arguments because we were mostly in the room with them when they were having banal conversations about what they were gonna watch on TV that night. So we were just there for everything. What ends up in the film is the stuff that works with the narrative arc, but it’s only there because we were there and present for all of the boring stuff.

Tanya Schevitz: That’s fascinating. It’s a nice little behind the scenes for those of us who don’t make documentaries.

Yoni Brook: It’s a lesson, why not to make documentaries because there are a lot of the moments where they’re just like, it’s very, it’s a very nonsensical, nonlinear way to tell a story. But I think the trade off to doing that is you get moments that a screenwriter would never write.

Tanya Schevitz: Oh, yeah. I mean, like those moments, even though you have to maybe sit through 75% of the boring conversations, what’s on TV, what will you eat, you’re capturing this. And it made it so much more powerful to have those real moments, like you said.

So, it seems like Yehuda was alone in pushing his message of reconciliation and peace along with that drive to get the hostages home. I mean, obviously he had both, like he wanted his daughter home, but he also just felt very strongly about that message of reconciliation and peace. He also seems to feel like that is what his daughter would want. What message do you think the film has in putting a focus on that, on his message, on his drive, and also his feeling that Liat would want that?

Lance Kramer: Well, certainly, there’s more time in the film that’s spent with Yehuda and then also with Liat and their respective desires to not have their trauma, as we were discussing, you know weaponized, used to inflict violence on Palestinians, Israelis, anyone. And if anything, I think this crisis that they found themselves in hardened or just deepened their sense of that value and their empathy and their desire not to seek revenge and to seek reconciliation and healing and connection. I think that that’s actually probably most kind of firmly represented through Liat. You know, it’s one thing for Yehuda to have this almost more, it’s not really fair to call it intellectual, but kind of more of a position, that he’s advancing. Whereas when Liat is seeking this kind of healing place, it’s also directly born from her firsthand trauma and how she’s channeling it in that direction, which we found to be incredibly profound. Again, to Yoni’s point too, this was not something that we scripted. This is just what happened. So we had no idea whether Liat would survive, how she was treated, was she harmed? Would she be physically okay, let alone how she would feel? So this was all being revealed to us in real time, as you see in the film as well. We felt that that was just both the truth of the family’s experience and was not a set of perspectives that was being broadly represented just in this whole hostage crisis, and so it felt really important to give attention. But it wasn’t, as you said, it wasn’t the only like way that people in the family felt and Netta had his own experience having been traumatized. And you get a sense for just how painful his experience was and how he’s fighting with his anger, and how Tal has this desire to be almost apolitical, if one could be that way. And Joey calls for not being on Palestinian land in the first place calling for a ceasefire.

So actually we wanted to validate in a sense, or recognize each person in the family’s experience and point of view, and not say that any one person’s own kind of lived experience was more valid than the others. And in a sense, that kind of representation of almost that kind of kaleidoscopic effect of seeing each person and how they were responding, gave each of their kind of point of views even more power and strength.

It was the actual experience of the family. And it also made it more relatable that we felt this unique power of the film as it materialized was that a lot of different people could watch this story from a lot of different points of view, Jewish and non-Jewish, and probably find someone in the story that they could connect with. And, in this day and age where everything seems to divide and polarize us, to be able to watch a film from all these different points of view and find someone that you might connect with, if not agree with, or relate to, felt like a real step forward.

Tanya Schevitz: Yeah. That brings me to the next question on how you see the film landing with Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. You know, does it land differently with different people?

Lance Kramer: We’ve had over 100 screenings in the last year in, I think now it’s been over 20 countries. So there’s just been a lot of different kinds of people that have seen the film. There’s been a lot of Jewish people that have seen the film, but it hasn’t only been Jewish people. And I think that in Jewish spaces, it’s been so painful to just go through the last two years and obviously there’s so many people that are directly impacted or just dealing, you know, that have lost loved ones, that have just experience different forms of trauma and grief, and it’s just pulling families and communities apart. People have not been able to talk about the situation. And it’s scary also to even try to bring it up because you get scared of being canceled or having conversations shut down or losing a friend, losing a family member, or having some sort of violent response. So there’s like a million different reasons why even just opening up the conversation is discouraged. And we felt like part of the role and the responsibility of the film is to go directly into spaces where it’s almost like most feared to have this kind of conversation where people are feeling, you know, most at risk of being pulled apart. And it’s been a beautiful thing to see how the film has been opening up dialogue, getting people to talk, getting people to feel, getting them to connect even when they’re arguing. It felt very constructive. Um, you know, we’ve never had a screening canceled. We’ve been packing houses left and right, whether it’s been at documentary film festivals, Jewish film festivals, regional film festivals, synagogues, colleges. It’s just been a really kind of beautiful thing to see so many different kinds of people connect with this story and wrestle with it too.

Yoni Brook: My take on it is that there’s been a lot of media made about October 7th and everything that’s come after. I think what our film can hopefully contribute to that discourse is just having the intimacy and empathy that you mentioned, it is something that is sort of in short supply because everything is seen like from a drone or through a talking head. And I think what the film tries to do is be very intimate and empathetic and nonjudgmental. And so by doing those things, it’s opening itself up in ways that other media (isn’t). Again, people have heard maybe too much about Israel Palestine right now, but I think there’s still a yearning for people to connect on the issues and conflicts that people are having internally and externally. And so I think the film is providing another way to do that that doesn’t feel so confrontational.

Tanya Schevitz: For sure. You continued to film when Yehuda ran into the, or meets the Palestinian advocate in the halls of Congress. Why? And why did you think it was important to include that scene?

Lance Kramer: Well, you know, there were these moments that just played out literally every day. Like Yoni was saying, you know, you just are with the family. And every moment there’s the mundane and there’s the profound, and sometimes even the mundane is the profound. You just don’t know what is going to happen each day. That moment where Yehuda runs into Ahmed Mansour just happened. You see it literally in real time play out in the film that way. They met on the fly just in the halls of Congress. It was, again, I think one of these moments that, like Yoni said, you can’t kind of script that something like this would happen, but it was kind of this maybe tragic and beautiful thing that, a father whose daughter and son-in-law were kidnapped is in Israel now, has gone thousands of miles from his home to go to DC of all places to try to get some help. And a Palestinian man whose family has been killed in Gaza, more than a dozen people in his family have been killed, is trying to do the same thing to get some help to end that violence in the exact same halls of Congress. And both of them are working the hallway, trying to get some help so that their families can stop suffering, and they happen to bump shoulders. And the fact that it took this Jewish Israeli-American father and a Palestinian to actually wind up having this encounter point in DC in the Capitol, rather than say back there, was just a remarkable occurrence. And you feel the desire to connect, you feel the kind of iciness and also some of the fears that each one of them brings to the table. It’s just very real. Like the tension is palpable, but also the desire to find some sort of common ground is just as palpable. I mean, it’s just a very potent and human moment. And when that scene played out, we didn’t know whether it would be in the film, but we just kept filming, we kept rolling, but then once we were reviewing the footage, it just became very clear that this was a critical moment that would be a part of the story.

Tanya Schevitz: Yeah, it was incredibly powerful. There’s a scene where Liat talks about the humanity of the family she was held by and the connections they made, and says that peace is the only option. What kind of response did you get to that scene and that message?

Lance Kramer: As we’ve been talking about the M.O. throughout this whole process was to document the family’s experience as authentically and honestly, as we could. So our camera showed up without judgment and really just wanted to listen and understand. And that was certainly the case with the family up until the point at which Liat was released. And then when Liat was released, we introduced the camera into her life after coming home from that experience, not knowing even what that experience was. Brandon had conversations with her right away that evening at the hospital and in the immediate days afterwards about the purpose and what we were trying to do with the film. And Liat remarkably was on board right away with the idea of participating in the film. She understood the importance of documenting the story. She really just had one kind of condition, which was that she didn’t want to have to be put in a box, and she didn’t want her story to just be reduced to the returned hostage, whatever that might be. And, she just wanted to be able to speak her truth. And she had had so much taken away from her already, she had lost so much agency as a result of her captivity. And so that felt like the easiest thing to commit to. And so for her, she as a hostage lived this extraordinary contradiction, if you could call it that, where on the one hand, her husband was murdered, her kibbutz was destroyed, she thought that her kids were maybe dead, she lost countless, neighbors and community members and the kibbutz and she also was taken at gunpoint against her will, and then also formed this human bond with the people who took her and felt that in that context of being a captive, she was well taken care of. And she formed a connection and felt deep empathy for the people who held her, and she saw firsthand injustices on the other side of the fence in Gaza and left with greater empathy for Palestinians even than she had had before. And she talks about that at the end of the film, how, she’s kind of grappling with the consequences of indifference. And so we felt that because she felt that that was important to share with Hanna Rosin in that interview, we felt it was important to be in the film. That’s part of what people who see the film then have to contend with, that this was her experience. And we’ve had some people tell us, oh my goodness, Liat is an amazing human. How could she have such empathy? You know, the fact that she could have such empathy for her captors or for Palestinians more broadly, is amazing. And she’s a role model for all of us, and if she can have empathy, then why can’t we? And we’ve had a lot of that. And then we’ve had some people that have been really upset and really angry when they see that scene or hear Liat speaking empathetically, and have felt like she’s betraying the other hostages or made other sorts of accusations. And they’ve had to grapple with Liat’s lived experience that didn’t square up with what they expected. And I think all of that is just kind of part of bringing a complicated story into the world.

Tanya Schevitz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that was so powerful for her to share that. In moments like this, silence is political and Liat’s father refused to be silent. What did you guys refuse to be silent about in shaping this film? I mean, do you feel like in shaping the film, there was a decision not to be silent about certain things?

Lance Kramer: I mean, I’ll say something, but Yoni, you should weigh in. I think that the immediate aftermath of October 7th was incredibly, not just painful, but also scary, let’s say on a personal level. And part of the consequence of that fear was silence. Like, I felt scared to say anything on social media or just talk to anyone in my life. I felt myself retreating, like rapidly into a shell. And I quickly realized that if we were going to make this film and embark on this journey to tell a story, again, not knowing what direction it would go, that part of that exercise would be a matter of like recognizing where fear was showing up, and then with our cameras and without our cameras walking towards the fear. And that it was a process of trying to either confront fear where it showed up, like externally or internally, and then kind of going towards it and trying to understand it better, you know, exploring it, unlocking it, whatever the case was. But that, that was like a guiding light, for a creative practice and all this kind of like a way of being. And even though we were getting a lot of negative feedback along the way that we shouldn’t make the film, that if we made the film something bad would happen that, you know, we should like, keep a really low profile and not, you know, be public with the film. I mean, there was a lot of negative discouragement along the way and people that I guess if we had listened to, the film just wouldn’t exist. But it felt important to, you know, hear that, but also still proceed. And I think that the impact of the film and the way people have responded to it thus far has kind of been like proof positive that that was the right call for us. And I think that that was really a set of decisions that was also being led by the family in a sense. The fact that they were also showing up that way in their own lives, made it a lot easier to kind of adopt that type of posture just as filmmakers. And the stakes were so high for people’s lives that it felt like this was like the least that we could do when people’s lives were on the line.

Tanya Schevitz: Wow. I mean, that’s fascinating that you were hearing from people you should not be doing this. Where were you hearing that? Just as you were going through the process and people seeing you filming?

Lance Kramer: Look, like we raised money for the film independently. So we had something like 120 or 125 individuals that ultimately funded the film, through mostly donations and a couple grants. But in order to have 120 people say yes, there were like almost 500 people that we had contacted altogether and had conversations with. And there was a bunch that said, no, you know. Way more that said no than said yes. And so a lot of that showed up in those conversations around support. It wasn’t always saying, you know, directly saying, “If you do this, this will be bad.” Sometimes people just were scared or it wasn’t the right fit, but there was a lot of that type of response. Some of it was from the distributors, or the people in the industry that might be in a position to like, take the film and platform it, where they were scared. Some of it was things that we saw in front of the camera, some of which you see in the film too, like the resistance that the family faced, you know, if they were speaking up. That showed up in Jewish spaces and not exclusively, not only in Jewish spaces, but it did play out that way. And the media, I mean, it’s just across the board. I mean, there’s just a lot of different forces at play that I think, you know, if you just kind of respond to those alone, you either stay silent or fall in line.

Yoni Brook: And I, I’ll just sort of say that I think part of what I think made people scared is that we were committed to a type of filmmaking that wasn’t going to give anybody an easy answer to what kind of film it was. We were committed to keeping the final cut of the film, which Brandon, the director, made. So it wasn’t like if you gave us X amount of money, you got to decide what the film was going to be. That’s not for everybody. There are other organizations that can kind of hit you if you have a certain metric or objective. This was a journalistically sound independent project where we, where, where Brandon was going to make decisions based on what the family was sharing and the choices that as a director he wanted to make. So again, when you’re dealing with a third rail topic like this, that’s a risky move to make. So it’s not for everybody, but I think the people that were brave enough to do it saw that it’s able to move culture in a way that some other projects that are, you know, trying to achieve a certain political mission or, or something else are, are not going to be able to engage people in that kind of emotional, narrative way.

Tanya Schevitz: Absolutely. Last question. Do you think that your film would’ve gotten as much attention or resonated as much with audiences if the family wasn’t American? I mean, it was unusual (among the hostages) that she was an American, Israeli-American. I’m wondering if that played into it at all, into the reactions or the response to the film?

Yoni Brook: I mean, I’ll answer it and say absolutely. I mean, as an American with a lot of family in Israel, like I, or siblings, you know, who are Israeli, I totally think that the Americanness of the story is part of what made it accessible to many audiences. On one hand, the family is very unique. In particular, they’re from a very specific kibbutz community, multiple kibbutz communities actually. I had never met a family like them at all, regardless of the whole hostage trauma and tragedy of their story. So I think they’re extremely unique, but at the same time, I think the relationship that Americans have with Israel right now, whether or not you have family there, is under scrutiny and should be under scrutiny more than ever. And so I think if you start to bring that part of the story out, it makes it more accessible to more audiences. There are thousands of stories that have come out from Israel Palestine in the last couple of years, some of which have American angles on them. There’s a film at Sundance (this year) called American Doctor, which takes place wholly in a hospital in Gaza, staffed by American doctors. So there’s lots of films that are exploring what that unique relationship is like between America and Israelis. But at the same time, I think that our film’s focus on multiple generations of a family, each with their own interpretations of that relationship in a personal lens, is something that I think makes it accessible.

Tanya Schevitz: Great. Thank you both so much. This has been so powerful of a conversation. I really appreciate it.

Lance Kramer is a DC-based filmmaker and co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures. Lance produced Holding Liat (Oscar Shortlisted, Berlinale Documentary Award Winner); The First Step (Tribeca, Afi Docs); City Of Trees (Full Frame, Pbs, Netflix); and The Webby Award-Winning documentary series The Messy Truth. Kramer is an alumni of the Sundance Creative Producers Summit, the Impact Partners Documentary Producers Fellowship, was named to the DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list, is a current Film Independent fellow, and most recently served as an advisor for the Sundance Producers Labs. Kramer was awarded five Individual Arts Fellowships by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities over the past two decades. In 2014, Kramer received the DC Mayor’s Arts Award, the highest honor given to working artists in the city. Kramer served two terms as Board Member of Docs in Progress, is a board member of the Foundation for the Augmentation of African-Americans in Film (FAAAF), and has been an active member of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) since 2016. Kramer holds a bachelor’s degree in history and film from Dartmouth College.

Yoni Brook is a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker whose films premiere at the Sundance, Berlin, New York and Toronto film festivals. Brook co-produced, co-directed and lensed the docuseries Philly D.A., called “the second coming of The Wire in docuseries form” by New York magazine. The series premiered at Sundance, was the first series to screen at the Berlinale and was broadcast on PBS Independent Lens/Topic and BBC Storyville. His credits as a producer and DoP include Holding Liat (Berlinale Documentary Award, Oscar Shortlist, Tribeca), The Oldest Person In The World (Sundance), The Price Of Milk (Tribeca), 32 Sounds (Sundance, Oscar Shortlist), Menashe (A24, Sundance) And Valley Of Saints (Sundance World Dramatic Audience Award Winner). Brook’s Directorial Debut, A Son’s Sacrifice (IDFA), won Best Documentary Short at the Tribeca Film Festival and the IDA Documentary Awards. Brook is an alumnus of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, CPB/PBS Producers Academy at WGBH, Berlinale Talents, and was the George Stoney Fellow at the Flaherty Seminar. He has served as a visiting professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Swarthmore College.

*Reboot Network members Ari Handel and Libby Lenkinski were additional producers on the film.