Jennifer Jason Leigh pleads for hostages' return at Jerusalem Film Festival

“In this difficult time, I just want to say, Hazak… tachziru oatam habayita achshav!” said Jennifer Jason Leigh, the acclaimed actress who is the guest of honor at the 41st Jerusalem Film Festival, using the Hebrew words for, “Be strong . . . bring them home now!” as she announced that the festival was officially open on Thursday night at an especially emotional opening ceremony at the Sultan’s Pool Amphitheater in Jerusalem.

 Leigh was referring to the 120 hostages still held by Hamas, who were kidnapped from Israel to Gaza when the war broke out on October 7, in an attack that killed 1200 people in Israel. The festival opening, usually very festive, was toned down out of respect for the hostages, the murdered, and the soldiers who have fallen and who are serving. Very few speakers addressed the crowd before the opening film, Thelma by Josh Margolin was shown, among them the CEO of the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the director of the festival, Roni Mahadav-Levin, and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion.

 Standing before an audience of 6000 at the Jerusalem Film Festival’s opening ceremony in the Sultan’s Pool Amphitheater, a thousand of whom were evacuees and bereaved families, Leigh received the festival’s Achievement Award from actress Reymonde Amsallem, and said, “It is very meaningful for me to be here tonight, to have my work recognized, but to be here not only as an actress, but as Jew. It’s very poignant for this to be my first time in Israel, because Israel has been on my mind every day.”

Growing up in Los Angeles in a secular family she said, “We were raised to be very proud Jews,” by a mother whose children called her, Eema, Hebrew for mom. “And every once in a while she would say, next year in Jerusalem.”

Referring to the clips from her movies shown at the opening ceremony, she noted how fortunate she had been, “To work with incredible directors in my career, and most of them are Jewish. I’m just going to read a few names so you can feel it to: Robert Altman, David Cronenberg, the Coen brothers, Charlie Kaufman, Sam Mendes, the Zafdie brothers, even Amy Heckerling. And I think that Quentin really deserves to be an honorary Jew,” she said, referring to Quentin Tarantino, who has been living for years in the Tel Aviv area with his wife, singer Daniella Pick, their two children.

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She said she was “overflowing with stories that I want to tell you, support and love that I want you to feel” and launched into a fascinating, virtually unknown story of how her stepfather, Reza Badiyi, was once directing a movie in Israel starring Israeli diva Gila Almagor and Jason Robards, which was called Death of a Stranger. The movie was about the PLO and, “My stepfather’s young Israeli assistant was telling him the script was terrible and unrealistic and sentimental, just dreck. So my stepfather brought my mother [the late screenwriter/actress Barbara Turner] over to Israel to rewrite the screenplay, that was her first time in Israel.” A meeting was arranged between Leigh’s mother and the assistant and PLO operatives in east Jerusalem, “very hush-hush and very clandestine.”

The PLO representatives only knew it was for research on an American movie and didn’t know Leigh’s mother was Jewish or the assistant was Israeli. “The things coming out of their mouths were just so horrific.” The assistant asked if they had ever met an Israeli and they said no, and the mood turned threatening as they asked where the assistant was from and asked if Leigh’s mother was Jewish. “My mother really hesitated and then she said, ‘Yes, I am,’ and I’m just so proud, I just find that so moving,” Leigh said, choking up. In the midst of all this tension in the meeting, Leigh said, her mother invited a young girl with the PLO representatives to the movie set and the two women became friends.

“A film can change your life, it can change your perspective,” she said. “And to be here tonight, this year is phenomenal for me. And I just want to say that I pray every day for the release of the hostages, in the morning when I get up and at night when I go to bed and probably five times an hour every single day for the war to end and the hostages to come home.”

Leigh’s work will be celebrated with a retrospective running throughout the festival that includes the films Georgia, by Ulu Grobard, with a script by her mother; Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight; Cronenberg’s eXistenZ; and Margot at the Wedding, directed by her ex-husband, Noah Baumbach. The festival runs at the Jerusalem Cinematheque through July 27. https://jff.org.il/en