Interview of Lance Kramer
Updated: 3 days ago
Steven Silver Interviews Lance Kramer, Producer of HOLDING LIAT:
Exploring the complexity of Israel-Palestine through the experience of one directly-impacted family
HOLDING LIAT is a new independent feature-length documentary film directed by Brandon Kramer, and produced by his brother Lance Kramer, who participated in the Kaleidoscope 2024 trip. In the weeks unfolding after Lance's relative Liat Atzili was kidnapped on October 7th, 2023, the film intimately chronicles her father Yehuda as he resists efforts to use her captivity to justify escalating violence in Gaza, exposing political and emotional rifts within his family as they struggle to find a way to bring her home. The film had its World Premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Best Documentary Award. The film subsequently was an Official Selection at more than 75 film festivals in 25 countries globally, including the Tribeca Film Festival, AFI FEST, Rome International Film Festival, and Doc Aviv. The film was Shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature Film, and will be released on TVOD platforms including Amazon and Apple this fall.
Holding Liat Interview
Steven Silver: Congratulations on an extraordinary film. Much of its power comes from the intimacy of your access to the family of a hostage. Liat Atzili and her husband, Aviv, were abducted from their home in Nir Oz on October 7, where they lived with their three children. You are related to the family and were particularly close to Liat’s father, Yehuda Beinin. When and how did you first learn that Liat and Aviv were missing?
Lance Kramer: It wasn't, I believe, until later that day or the next day that we got the text from our cousin that Liat and Aviv were missing. Once we started to appreciate the magnitude of what had happened, we started checking in with our respective relatives. We have relatives on both sides, on my mom's side and my dad's side. And so, we were just kind of checking in with whomever we could either directly or indirectly to see how people were doing.
Then we found out that the kibbutz had been attacked and that they were amongst the missing. So that's how we found out – it was in those first 24 hours.
Steven Silver: How did the idea for the film emerge?
Lance Kramer: We reached out to Liat’s father Yehuda, in the beginning just to say that we were thinking of them and to please let us know if there was anything that we could do. What do you say in a situation like that? So, we just expressed our care as family. Then we had this call with Yehuda and we spoke for about an hour or so and, on that call, he just opened up. He was very matter of fact and transparent - the way you see him in the film.
And he just started kind of unloading. About what had happened, what he knew, the fact that he had gotten almost no response from the Israeli government, that he was on daily, if not multiple calls a day with the US State Department, CIA, FBI, and the White House. At that point he had already spoken to President Biden.
So, he was just sharing with us - that overnight this had become his new reality and already there were disagreements in the family that were starting to emerge and how worried and concerned he was that their situation would become fodder for or part of the justification to wage this much greater war. A war that he strongly opposed, a war he felt that Liat and Aviv would also strongly oppose.
He was concerned and afraid – he was asking how he could express himself when asked to speak up publicly especially where he was limited to a sound bite to express his views. And he felt, how could he possibly contain all the multitude of meanings in that confined soundbite. For Yehuda, that was very, very scary and stressful. And we just had that conversation that covered all those different ideas. And at a certain point in the conversation, I found myself wishing we’d had a recording of what he said. So, the idea of a film just kind of organically unfolded through the conversation. We just naturally started to think, well, what things we could do to help? And kind of collectively this idea emerged. What could be the benefit of documenting some of these family experiences? If nothing else, because of Liat’s being a history teacher, Yehuda felt that, there was a moment of complete powerlessness where their agency had been stripped from them, from Liat and Aviv obviously, but also from the families as well.
So, there was a sense or a wish to restore some agency that was very powerful. And, of course, Yehuda felt that a way to honor Liat would be to have this historical record and, if she survived, she would appreciate the fact that this had been documented. So, we thought let’s start with a few days of filming and see how this goes. We also didn't know at that point, if this was going to go on for two days, two months, two years. There were all these unknowns. But we started with just a few days, and it snowballed very quickly as you see in the film.
Steven Silver: Was there a moment when you felt you had a film that an audience should see?
Lance Kramer: The moment we realized that there was something more than just a document for the family or a short film or a social media post or anything like that was when we were filming with Netta, Yehuda, and Tal in that scene that's relatively early in the film, when the three of them are sitting in a circle and you have these three generations of the family who are expressing themselves, their emotions, their politics. They obviously love each other, but they're also really challenging each other. They're having to deal with each other. And that was playing out in real time in front of us. They felt comfortable being vulnerable and open in front of the camera and we just felt that this was such an extraordinary painful but important thing to witness, and we just felt this deep responsibility to continue to follow whatever it was that was happening in front of us.
We couldn't profess to understand it, but it just felt like something that could only be understood better through staying with the family during this time and just trying to bear witness.
Steven Silver: One of the extraordinary things about the film is that from pretty early on, not only are you inside a family in a very intimate way, during the opening moments of October 7th, but that they have very different political views and also different ideas what should be done to free the hostages. Can you talk about this?
Lance Kramer: The internal tension that each family member felt and that the whole family felt was so different from what we were seeing in the press, where there was this kind of unified singular message, saying “free the hostages, bring them home”. They obviously shared that feeling, they wanted Liat, Aviv, and the rest of the hostages to come home. But in fact, what was going on for the family was a much more complex conflict - where emotions and politics blended and that was something that we were not seeing anywhere else. Also, you were already seeing how polarizing the conflict was, and that suddenly, sides were being drawn and people were already getting scared to speak up, out of fear of reprisal. And what we were seeing was that every person in the family had no choice but to speak up, with each other, and on the evening news or in public speeches.
And they had to confront those fears and directly engage and express themselves. They had no choice but to do that because their loved one’s lives were on the line. And that was profound to us. Just the fact that here so many other people were saying, “Let's not talk about this at the dinner table. We don't want to break up our family.” And they said, “To save our family, we have to deal with these things. We must talk about this.” That to me was such an extraordinary thing that you had people kind of running towards their fear. Towards the things that were the scariest because they had to. We felt like if there was a way to somehow kind of chronicle that, it could it be an extraordinary gift for the world to see.
Steven Silver: You chose to focus on the family. Can you talk about that filmmaking choice?
Lance Kramer: The question became for us: how could we be conscious of the larger implications of what's happening outside of the family but stay focused on the family itself. You kind of have this inclination as a storyteller and as a filmmaker to think about the big picture and zoom out especially when it comes to the Middle East conflict. You want to see more context. But our inclination was just to go deeper and keep the frame tighter and focus on the family. That was the thing that we felt was unique to us.
Steven Silver: You went down and in rather than out and wide?
Lance Kramer: Yes. It wasn't like, “Okay now we've we got the family, let's go to the context or go interview the next family.” It was like, “Okay what's going on with this family? What's their journey? What are their contradictions? What are their conflicts? Let's go further down that rabbit hole.” That was a very conscious choice.
Steven Silver: One of the things I really admired was your restrained use of news footage. You largely avoided the obvious external material — the release footage, the Hamas clips — and that gave the film a much greater intimacy and power. Was that a conscious choice from the beginning?
Lance Kramer: Yes, it was conscious choice. It was a north star for us. To not get distracted by these other kinds of contextual sources. And if there was news footage used, we would only see it through the eyes of the family. For example, we filmed their reaction as they watched a news report on television. To experience the footage and those moments through them.
Steven Silver: Can you say more about the tensions in the family? Especially between Yehuda and others in the family?
Lance Kramer: On a personal level, my brother Brandon and I had spent a great deal of time with Yehuda, going back over 20 years. We stayed in the kibbutz with Yehuda and Chaya in 2009 the first time we went to Israel, and we spent a lot of late nights talking with Yehuda about politics.
Steven Silver: And Yehuda’s brother is Professor Joel Beinin a renowned professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Stanford University.
Lance Kramer: That’s right. In fact, before going to Israel, I lived in Joel's basement for a while when I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2006. So, I spent time with Joel as well. I knew a little bit about the socialist movement that they were a part of and I knew that they were these old kibbutzniks. That was my introduction to Israel. I met people like Yehuda well before I met any other Israelis. So, I had a kind of reverence for them. For Yehuda It felt like all the values that he had committed his life to for the better part of five-plus decades were coming to a head at this moment. And it was his homeland that was at a crossroads. And his family was at a crossroads. And his values were at a crossroads. And so, he chose to lean in as hard as he could into all of it, in an uncompromising way. It felt like his life had been leading up to that moment. And I think that his lack of compromise came from that feeling.
But then of course other people in the family were having their own experience too. Almost immediately there was conflict. His view was not the same as Liat’s sister Tal or Netta's or Chaya's. They felt no less strongly about what they believed and what they were feeling. And so, it became important to understand Yehuda, but also important to see every other person in the family and really try to appreciate and understand where they were coming from as well. So, it became no less important to understand that, as much as Yehuda may be carrying this empathy for Palestinians or disdain for Netanyahu, that that could not be more important than Netta's anger which came from just as authentic a place. I would also say that sometimes Yehuda's politics could be in part a coping mechanism, a way of managing his emotions. And the idea someone’s political perspective might also be a way of avoiding the depth of his pain. And I hope that the film shows that as well. I think by the time Yehuda breaks down later in the film you have some sense of the pain that he was carrying.
Steven Silver: Can you say more about the moment when Yehuda does break down? It is heart wrenching.
Lance Kramer: For Yehuda, his place in the film leads to this moment. He becomes a complete person, and not just this guy who has this set of beliefs that you agree or disagree with.
In that moment you see that here's a father, here's a husband, here's a brother who has strong opinions and a deep set of values, but he also has a hard time expressing his emotions and sometimes hides those feelings behind political arguments so as to not have to confront the depth of the pain. And to be able to see that wall come down is a kind of gift that they could offer us in the midst of their tragedy for other people to bear witness.
Steven Silver: I was curious if there were moments of conflict for you and Brandon between responding to the needs of the family and responding to the needs of the film.
Lance Kramer: Oh, absolutely. The biggest one that I can think of would be the day that Liat was released. It was incredibly stressful because we had gotten into this rhythm of trying to document and film as much as we could. We would have conversations with every family member at every step of the way about our intent to film different scenes. And so, in a sense, we were renewing consent daily. It wasn't like, “You signed a release, so now we get permission to film anytime.” It was an ongoing process and a conversation about access and consent. We were showing up without a camera and also just being supportive. Yehuda felt very strongly that we should film the moment Liat was reunited with her family. He was convinced that the moment of reunification was essential. He had been fighting for Liat. This was the moment that he had been fighting for. But Liat’s kids felt very strongly this was their moment with their mother. It was not a moment to be filmed. They supported the idea of participating in thefilm, in the service of trying to bring their mother home. And now that she was coming home it was almost like, “mission accomplished,” and let’s focus on Liat. So, they were strongly opposed to filming. It caused a huge argument within the family. Also, there was a third factor which is the IDF. The IDF was insistent that they film the family being unified and that we not film. So, there was a triangle. There was this argument within the family. And there were also arguments with the IDF. We felt horrible because it was the moment when the presence of the camera was adding to the stress. It was a horrible feeling.
From an ethical standpoint it was incredibly difficult and ultimately what we decided, was that it was important to us to respect Liat’s kid’s wishes. So, we did not film when Liat was reunited with her children.
The IDF did not respect their wishes and continued to film. So, they filmed, we did not. And then what everyone agreed to was that they were comfortable with us filming when Yehuda, Tal, and Chaya were reunited. So, that’s what we did, that’s what you see in the film. And, somewhere in the middle of all that, Brandon had to explain to Liat that we had been making a film during the time when she was a captive.
Steven Silver: And how did she respond to that?
Lance Kramer: Liat is an extraordinary person, and her reaction to Brandon was in alignment with who she is. When Brandon explained that during the 50 days we had been filming with her family, he had a few minutes of time to explain the purpose of the film and to basically seek her consent to be filmed in that moment.
Remember, we had to be prepared for the fact that she might not come home. And we had to prepare for the fact that she could come home and be opposed to the idea of the film. We felt like the film could not exist if it didn't have her blessing. All those times Yehuda said, "I know my daughter," and he was right. She gave us her blessing.
Steven Silver: I want to ask you about the response to the film both inside Israel and outside Israel.
Lance Kramer: When we premiered the film in Israel, every moment in the film which contained a critique of the Israeli government, there was rapturous applause at the premiere. That might come as a surprise to some people.
Some people told us ‘This will never play in Israel’ but in fact people engaged with the film. It's not like it was widespread and millions of people saw it. But it was the opening night film at the Doc Aviv Film Festival, it sold out at the Tel Aviv opera house. It also played in every cinematheque in the country. And it was broadcast on Yes, which is one of the main television providers. And it's still available for streaming on Yes.
Steven Silver: And outside of Israel?
Lance Kramer: So of course, there were people that had stark disagreements with the film. And they just couldn't deal with Yehuda. It was too much for them. But they were a minority. Most audiences trusted the authenticity of the film and treated it with respect. In part because it's a story of a hostage and a hostage family.
What has been particularly meaningful for me has been to show the film in Jewish spaces where there's complexity like the screenings we’ve had at synagogues, within a JCC, to a Jewish film festival audience, within a kind of space where one can’t assume that everyone is in agreement. So, in at least one screening, people came up to Liat yelling at her and saying things like, ‘How dare you betray the hostages? How dare you betray the victims?’ And she just said, “I am also a hostage. I was also a victim.” So, she's had that kind of accusation directly leveled at her not just online, but literally in person. And I've been at screenings where people have said things to me too.
Steven Silver: I wanted to ask if the family have seen the film. And if so, how do they feel about the film?
Lance Kramer: Everyone in the family likes the film. We made a commitment to every person in the family that they would see the film before it was locked. We've actually made the same commitment to everyone who's been in our prior films. It’s a central tenet of the school of ethics that we were trained in. It’s my belief that the kind of intimacy and vulnerability you see in the film is only possible in large part because they know that there's a point at the end of the process where they will be in the driver's seat and can decide to give or withhold their blessing.
Steven Silver: Do you commit to making changes that they request?
Lance Kramer: We always say that you will see the film before it's finished. You're not going to be in the editing room with us, but you will see the film before it's locked. And we will ask you: is the film truthful? Does it represent your experience? And is it harmful to you? We don’t want to cause harm. It doesn't mean that everything in the film will be easy for you to see, but if you tell us that something's not accurate or that this will cause you harm, then we want to know. And we if we disagree with your view or disagree with something you want, we'll probably argue about it and make a case for why we made a choice. But, at the end of the day, we’re not going to release a film in the world that would cause you harm or that was inaccurate. So, we did individual screenings with every single family member. Liat’s kids did not want to watch the film. They weren't ready. They said, "If our mother is good with it, then we'll be fine." No one asked for changes.
Steven Silver: Can you say a little about how the family are managing today?
Lance Kramer: I think that they're doing as well as they could be doing given what they've been through. And they're also living through the current war. They’re going about their lives. If you just sat down and had coffee with them, you wouldn't know what they've been through, had you not seen the film. Liat is back at work. What Liat said is that, for her, the hardest thing that she shared with us is dealing with the loss of her the love of her life, Aviv.
Steven Silver: How would you reflect on your experience in the Kaleidoscope 2024 program in shaping the film, including your direct observations as well as your discussions with speakers and other participants on the trip?
Lance Kramer: Joining the Kaleidoscope trip in 2024 was a profoundly moving and formative experience for me on many levels. I had only been to Israel one time nearly 20 years ago prior to the trip. It was revelatory to return to Israel at that time and connect with so many directly-impacted people from such diverse perspectives who spoke with our group. Particularly while working on HOLDING LIAT which chronicled one family's experience post-October 7th, Kaleidoscope broadened my perspective on how other Israelis and Palestinians were navigating the complexity and pain of the moment. While discussions around Israel-Palestine often become reduced or shut down outright—especially now—I was in awe of how the complexity of life and the conflict was brought to the surface and given space for deeply humanistic engagement. In this spirit, Kaleidoscope also offered a rare opportunity to understand how the film could play a meaningful role in the world and contribute to new connections and understanding, rather than further inflame divisions. I was particularly impacted by the relationships I formed with other participants and the conversations we had throughout the experience. I was surprised to find that it was an opportunity to form new relationships with people from Jewish communities different from my own in DC, and to gain insight into the discussions and challenges they are facing. The strong connections formed with the Toronto community have been particularly life-changing: these relationships led to an unforgettable Toronto premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival this past winter, and an ongoing friendship with David Lepofsky who directly inspired our efforts to create full accessibility materials for the film (audio description and captions) which we recently reflected upon in this essay. Simply put, I was in awe of what Kaleidoscope offered, and I left the trip deeply inspired by the passion for learning, discovery, wrestling, and community.
Please discuss the differences your film and the other three October 7 films in progress featured alongside it – all by well known, seasoned filmmakers - in the very powerful session led by Steve Silver at the ANU museum theatre as part of the Kaleidoscope 2024 program.
Lance Kramer: We were honored to be included in the works-in-progress session moderated by Steven Silver at the ANU Museum. As this was a very early point in our process, this was the first time we shared any film material with any audiences outside of our core team. I was extremely curious to understand how the Kaleidoscope attendees experienced the material, how they would respond to the family and our observational filmmaking approach, and also what kinds of conversations might result. It was powerful to see how the other filmmakers were constructing narratives that creatively revisited the day of October 7th through the experiences of directly-impacted people primarily using archival material and interviews. Our film placed a direct focus on the days and weeks after October 7th, filming in real-time as the Beinin-Atzili family navigated the direct aftermath of the attack, the unfolding hostage crisis, and ultimately Liat's eventual return and the grieving after Aviv's loss as it played out viscerally in front of our camera. This tradition of cinema verité is the type of filmmaking that my brother Brandon and I have been dedicated to over the past two decades. We believe it offers a rare window into the human experience and allows for the ethical representation of nuances and complexities within human relationships and conflicts without being exploitative. Sharing the material at the ANU session was very important for me to have an early gauge on whether our creative intention to represent the family's experience in this way was working. The positive reinforcement from the group was an invaluable form of feedback that I carried with me throughout the rest of our intense process.
Steven Silver: Can you describe how widely has the film been screened?
Lance Kramer: It has played in over 75 festivals in 22 countries, a total of more than 250 screenings worldwide. It won the top jury award at the Berlin International Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature.
Steven Silver: And if one wants to watch the film in North America?Lance Kramer: Right now, there are still a few more cities where the film is playing theatrically. You can also host a screening at your synagogue or school through a website called Kinema. We are going to keep having the film available on Kinema throughout the rest of the year. Later this fall, we will release the film for rental on iTunes or Amazon, or maybe we'll get lucky and they'll surprise us and a buyer will emerge from one of the larger platforms. We're not holding our breath though. A lot of these films about Israel and Palestine, no one wants to touch them.
