“I knew that the team that selected the film really liked it and was made emotional by it and wanted to show it – that was heart-warming to know,” said Shoval, who didn’t enter A Letter to David for any awards. “But I didn’t know how the public or the media would react to it. To see them holding up posters of David was an act of solidarity that came as a surprise to us. At the end of the screening, you could see people were very moved, some were in tears. They clapped during the duration of the credits and there were lots of questions for us afterwards. It felt like the crowd was collectively hugging David’s family and us. It was a much-needed embrace.”
Tom first met Cunio and his twin brother Eitan, both Kibbutz Nir Oz residents, 13 years ago when he was scouting for brothers with a close bond for his first film, Youth. In a dark irony, that story is about a hostage taking – the brothers play two cash-strapped young men who kidnap the daughter of a wealthy family to pay off their debts.
“They had no experience in acting whatsoever but the bond between them was amazing,” recalled Shoval. “It was so vivid from the moment they entered the audition room.”
Youth’s premiere was at the Berlinale 12 years ago and Shoval remembers the two brothers suddenly finding themselves famous. He recalled: “People were asking for their autographs and they were surprised by that. We were all young and it felt like we had the world at our feet.”
A Letter to David, which is still waiting for a UK distributor, looks at Tom’s story with the brothers. When he started to make it, he found hours of film of the siblings at Nir Oz. He incorporates that with interviews with Eitan in the documentary.
David and his younger brother Ariel remain captive in Gaza. Recently returned hostages have indicated that David remains alive. The pair were taken along with six other members of their family and extended family including David’s wife and twin daughters, her sister and niece, and Ariel’s girlfriend Arbel Yehoud (who was released recently to discover her brother had been murdered on October 7.)
Shoval plans to travel with the documentary to highlight the plight of the hostages, and David in particular. “This is not a political film,” he said. “I think it is important to show the human suffering behind this thing.”
Poirot star David unravels mystery of why he rarely plays an Englishman
Not an Englishman: David SuchetPOOL/AFP via Getty Images
David Suchet may have converted to Christianity as a younger man but the Poirot actor tells me that the looks he inherited from his three Jewish grandparents (only his mother’s mother was not Jewish) means that he has rarely been offered roles as an Englishman.
I spoke to the celebrated actor (pictured) ahead of his first TV drama since he removed his Poirot moustache 13 years ago.
He finally plays an English character – the mysterious retired doctor George in melodrama The Au Pair, which airs on Five in a couple of weeks.
“Look at me, I am not an on-screen typical Englishman,” he says when I ask why he thinks he is so often cast as a foreigner.
At the same time, this celebrated character actor admits that he isn’t sure he likes the way things were changing in the acting world when only people of a certain minority are allowed to play that minority.
“I know in Hollywood an actor had to leave the set about three years ago because he was playing a Jewish character and he was deemed unsuitable because he was not,” he says.
“But then that does beg the question for Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
“Should you be Jewish to play that or can you embrace that as a character actor? And I am out to lunch on that. I have no idea at the moment because it is changing.”
A room in House of David for Ayelet Zurer
Biblical story: Israeli actor Ayelet ZurerGetty Images
A new production about the life of King David called House of David started on Amazon Prime last week. The series was created by the same faith-based Christian production company behind epic The Chosen about the life of Jesus.
David is played by Egyptian-American Michael Iskander and King Saul by Arab Israeli Ali Suliman while the role of Saul’s wife Queen Ahinoam is taken by Jewish Israeli Ayelet Zurer. English-speaking viewers will know her best for her role in the Netflix drama, Shtisel where she played Elisheva, the older woman who Akiva Shtisel falls in love with.
Zurer says: “The same god that anointed her husband three times is now saying another king is coming, move out of the way. She’s refusing to let that go. Her dream, her life, her mission, her whole identity now shifts.
“Very much like every tragic character in the Greek mythology, she actually brings into her own home the thing that will eventually destroy that home.”
Amy gives us a clue on how her heroine Cher was born
Thinking out of the box: Amy HeckerlingGetty Images
This week I am due to be at the eagerly awaited opening night of Clueless the musical, a perfect opportunity for escapism into 1990s nostalgia.
Amy Heckerling, created and directed Clueless and has been working on the musical for five years. She tells me that while Clueless is famously based on Emma, the Jane Austen heroine wasn’t actually the inspiration for her chirpy lead character Cher Horowitz.
“A lot of people think that I was reading Jane Austen and decided to adapt Emma but that’s not exactly what happened,” says Heckerling. “I was kind of toying with a character in my head who I figured was a little bit the opposite of me. Somebody who was very confident who thought they knew everything and was very happy and then I thought of Emma.”
Heckerling is a rare female success story in Hollywood – but she feels she’s constantly fighting with executives who don’t want her to do the kind of movies she is interested in. The story of Clueless came out of that. “In Hollywood, they always are trying to put you in a little box. That’s what led me into the Clueless world: trying hard to avoid the box that they want to put you in.”
