HOLDING LIAT (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
The documentary Holding Liat focuses a compassionate and introspective lens on the ongoing conflict in Gaza through the conflicting feelings of one Israel-American family whose loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas.
Roughly two weeks after the terrorist organization abducted civics teacher Liat Beinin Atzili and her artist husband, Aviv Atzili, during its incursion on Oct. 7, 2023, filmmakers related to her began documenting her family’s experience, the film notes. Although largely focusing on the Atzili family, the film illuminates the sympathetic and varied views of people caught in up in history as it unfolds.
Holding Liat screened during the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. It previously won the 2025 Berlinale Documentary Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Both in their late 40s, the Atzilis lived on a kibbutz in southern Israel during the attack, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the Arab–Israeli War in 1948. About two hundred commandos raided the area, kidnapping about 250 Israeli residents, including twelve people who, like Liat Atzili, were American citizens.
The conflict in the area since then has killed more than one thousand Israelis and tens of thousands of Palestinians, triggering a humanitarian crisis.
Soon after the kidnapping, a hostage negotiation consultant advises Liat’s parents to leverage her American citizenship. His colleagues in Qatar will negotiate on behalf of then-US President Joe Biden, he explains, but they won’t discuss stronger measures, such as a ceasefire.
Thus begins the delicate situation surrounding the family. Director Brandon Kramer (The First Step) intermingles phone calls, Zoom calls, and closeups with the relatives, creating an intimate portrait of people who all want Liat’s and Aviv’s safe return but are torn about what to do and how much to reveal.
Liat’s parents, Yehuda and Chaya Beinin, moved to Israel from the United States in the 1970s with the dream of a “shared society” where Israelis and Palestinians could “recognize the humanity in each other,” her father, Yehuda Beinin, says. Unable to sit still, he flies to Washington, DC, soon after the kidnapping to meet with lawmakers and political strategists. His wife, trying to maintain some normalcy, remains in Israel to support Liat and Aviv’s children there.
Yehuda, who dislikes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thinks he honors Liat by promoting a message of peace and reconciliation regarding the conflict. “I take serious exception to using this [abduction] to foster some kind of war agenda,” he says.
The couple’s youngest son, Netta Atzili, speaks publicly about how he wants his parents back but privately clashes with his grandfather. He’s angry, and while he recognizes there are innocents in Gaza, it’s harder to know who they are after what’s happened, he says.
Liat’s sister, Tal, likewise tells Yehuda to stick to the couple’s release, especially when talking with people who might help them. “You think I wanted to meet Mitch McConnell?” she says at one point, referring to the Republican Senator from Kentucky.
Between phone calls with Israeli Army liaisons relaying intelligence updates, rallies supporting both Israel and Palestine, and some historical context about the conflict, the film shows how this situation heightens emotions but offers no easy answers. In one scene, strategists outline talking points that leave Yehuda looking pensive in one panel of a skylight, as if he’s boxed in.
Ending on an ambivalent note, Holding Liat illuminates the sympathetic and varied views of people caught up in history as it unfolds.
