Holding Liat review: ‘A loving family rent apart by October 7’ ★★★★

“Bibi understands what every right-wing politician understands – never to waste an opportunity to serve your agenda,” he tells his other daughter Tal who has joined him in Washington DC where they and relatives of other kidnapped victims are lobbying Congress and President Biden’s government to help with their release. It is hope fuelled by the fact that Liat and her parents have American as well as Israeli citizenship.

Yehuda and his daughter Tal in Washington, DC[Missing Credit]

The message Yehuda brings to the campaign – for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians to recognise the humanity in each other – is unsurprisingly falling on deaf ears. Tal wants him to stop. The agenda should be getting Liat released she argues. But Yehuda is not for budging. He is, he says, honouring Liat by “advancing the message of reconciliation and peace” that she lived by.

Few are listening though. Then, during media interviews in Congress a man captioned by the film as “Ahmed Mansour, Palestinian Advocate” closes in on Yehuda. The whispered yet audible exchange of barren platitudes and from Mansour the claim that the hostages are dying is far less friendly than their body language of hands on shoulders. Meanwhile Yehuda and his opinions are increasingly isolated during the campaign’s tour of nationalistic flag-waving rallies. “This is bullshit,” he fumes, before leaving a MAGA convention.

Because it is a matter of public record it is no spoiler to say that Liat was released, as was her husband’s body. But it is a tense wait, and one which takes its visible toll on Yehuda.

Late in the film Liat cuts a bewildered figure attempting to reconcile her experience with her politics of peaceful coexistence: a politics that was decimated along with many of the Israelis who believed in it.

Holding Liat

Cert 15