The political and personal collide in Holding Liat, a documentary that follows an Israeli-American family after two of their own were taken hostage on October 7, 2023, in the Hamas attacks. As they grapple with fear, anger, and uncertainty, each person deals with the tragedy in ways that reflect both their individual character and their larger beliefs. Holding Liat can be viewed as a microcosm of the differing, dividing opinions amongst Jewish people (and the world as a whole) on Gaza, but it’s also simply about a single family at the worst time imaginable.
Holding Liat opens with a nightmare: Yehuda Beinin is on a phone call where he hears that his daughter, Liat Beinin Atzili, is being held captive in the Gaza Strip, as is her husband, Aviv Atzili. Jets fly overhead, drowning out the sound and emphasizing the urgency and immediacy of what is happening both to their family and in the region. As weeks pass, Yehuda, his wife Chaya, and their family work to bring Liat and Aviv home, while they disagree about how to do that most effectively. Liat is an American citizen, adding additional complexity to her situation and potential release. Her status results in Yehuda making a trip to Washington, DC to talk to American politicians to try to persuade them to join in the cause for hostage release.
Holding Liat gives weight and consideration to everyone’s beliefs, as each member of the family handles the crisis differently. However, the documentary spends the bulk of its time with Yehuda and leans heaviest on his progressive perspective. He has a Bernie bumper sticker on his car, so it’s not exactly surprising when he rails against Benjamin Netanyahu and what Yehuda sees as a lack of concern for the hostages. Some people around him think he’s politicizing the tragedy, but he is unable to separate what happened to his daughter with what caused the attack to happen and what will happen in the region in the future. For all the time Holding Liat devotes to Yehuda and his perspective, it also shows empathy for the family members who are focused on the safe return of Liat and Aviv rather than thinking about the larger situation. It treats everyone with understanding, refusing to judge those who react in anger to the tragedy.
Director Brandon Kramer is distantly related to Yehuda, Liat, and the Beinin family, and he brings both his experience as a documentarian and his closeness to the family as assets to Holding Liat, which was also produced by his brother Lance Kramer and Darren Aronofsky. Brandon Kramer often takes an observational approach (while also interviewing with his subjects), and he captures strikingly intimate scenes and frank discussions that an outsider likely wouldn’t have been privy to. There’s not much that’s revelatory in Holding Liat’s construction, but Kramer’s access and proximity to the family takes the film pretty far.
Watching a documentary now about the immediate aftermath of the 2023 attack by Hamas affords the viewer more knowledge than both the subjects and filmmakers could have possibly had in the moment. Seeing it more than two years later means that the audience’s opinions may have shifted or further cemented with ensuing events and new knowledge, particularly around Israel’s response. While Holding Liat focuses on what is now just a short (but absolutely critical) period in this ongoing crisis, it still feels relevant to where we are today. Some may feel it doesn’t go far enough—Holding Liat only briefly acknowledges the death toll on the Palestinian side, which has since grown in the genocide committed by Israel—but overall it’s a measured, empathetic picture of a particular family at a particular time.
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“Holding Liat” is out Friday in limited release.
