The Cinema for Peace Foundation presented Guy Nattiv’s movie, Golda, starring Helen Mirren, with its Most Valuable Film of the Year award, at a gala fundraiser in Berlin earlier this week.
Golda, the story of how Israel’s only female prime minister coped with the outbreak of the 1973 war, shared the prize with two other recent films that deal with issues connected to human rights and war.
These were One Life by James Hawes, in which Anthony Hopkins plays Sir Nicholas Winton, a London broker who rescued more than 600 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, an eerie look at the daily life of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss and his family in their house on the grounds of the death camp.
Nattiv and Mirren attended the gala with 102-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander, who has devoted her life to telling her story to young people.
Event references October 7 massacre
The specter of the October 7 massacre by Hamas in Israel and the continuing negotiations to free more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas was referenced at the event. Nattiv spoke about the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel, signed in 1978, and the foundation for which was laid by Golda Meir during her term as prime minister. He said he hoped some kind of similar agreement could be brokered today.
“They saved millions of lives. Here’s to peace between Palestinians and Israelis and a new leadership in Israel and in Palestine,” he said. Golda, which premiered at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, last year, is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Hair and Makeup.
The Cinema for Peace Foundation was created in 2008 with the goal of bringing about peaceful change through film. Many major stars have been involved in it over the years, including George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Angelina Jolie.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was presented with an award by actress Sharon Stone, in honor of her contributions to human rights and peace.