Compelling fly-on-the-wall portrait of a hostage family

The zoomed-in image of a dishevelled, stubble-faced man sitting outside, phone to his ear, confronts cinema-goers. Yehuda Beinin, 72, an American- Israeli, has undoubtedly hardly slept in the past days since his daughter and son-in-law were disappeared from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. 

His eyes bulge when he learns from an Israeli Army Liaison officer that his daughter Liat was kidnapped by terrorists and is alive in Gaza, then dim as he’s told there is no news of her Israeli husband, Aviv Atzili.

While the award-winning US documentary, Holding Liat, tracks the daunting journey of one hostage family facing their worst nightmare, it is also a microcosm of the politics and divergent perspectives behind the Israel-Palestine conflict feeding into the hostage narrative. Its success in achieving that was recognised with the prize for Best Documentary at the Berlinale International Film Festival in February.

Liat Atzili’s experience under Hamas captivity was extraordinary. Having been abducted from her kibbutz home near the Gaza border, the 50-year-old mother of three, in a state of shock, found her captors, strangely kind and humane.

She was mostly held in an apartment in Khan Younis – not in tunnels - with another woman from Nir Oz under the watch of two religious fundamentalist Hamas guards, one of whom was a lawyer, the other a teacher. The women were fed well, they could shower, watch English TV, and even held long conversations with the guards in English, largely about politics.

The confusion of her treatment in captivity was matched by her confusion when her captors ordered her to go with them but promised not to harm her.