Israel
Oscar-winning documentary maker Richard Trank moves to Israel to make October 7 film
November 26, 2025 15:17
An Oscar-winning film director made aliyah last month, after spending four decades making documentaries at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
Richard Trank, whose film The Long Way Home won an Academy Award in 1998 for its depiction of the journeys of Holocaust survivors after the Second World War, touched down in Tel Aviv in October with his partner and two dogs.
Trank has set up his own production company, Sea Point Films and Media, and one of his first films, The Road Home, is a spiritual successor to his award-winning project, as it follows October 7 survivors and their attempts to rehabilitate.
While interviewing a Nova survivor, Trank was moved by her “determination to go on with life and rebuild and not let this stop her from living the life she wanted to live”.
Speaking from his new home in Herzliya, Trank said: “I started thinking about really a post-October 7 project, because we all know what happened on October 7. We’ve all heard the stories, and it’s important to tell those stories”.
Trank’s work comprises 16 documentary films produced by Moriah Films, a production branch of the Wiesenthal Center, all with Jewish and/or Israeli themes.
Many of them have featured narration from Hollywood’s elite, including Ben Kingsley, Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, and Morgan Freeman – all of whom worked for free, simply being keen to help tell the stories of the plight of Jews and Israelis through the 20th century and beyond.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is named after the eponymous Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, who survived four concentration camps and later contributed to the location and bringing to trial of Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann and Franz Stangl.
Trank left Moriah at the start of this year, shortly after the founder of the Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, resigned as its dean.
Trank is excited for a new lease of life in Israel. “I wish I had done this earlier”, he told The Times of Israel.
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