Award-Winning, Emotional Documentary ‘Holding Liat’ Official Trailer

by Alex Billington
December 12, 2025
Source: YouTube

“There’s no way of knowing how much longer this is going to go on.” Film Forum has revealed the official trailer for an award-winning indie documentary film titled Holding Liat, which initially premiered at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. This is one of the most unique, openly honest, thoughtful films about the October 7th incident in Palestine. After Israeli-American teacher Liat Atzili & her husband Aviv are kidnapped from their kibbutz in Israel by Hamas forces, filmmaker Brandon Kramer, a relative, follows the experiences of Liat’s family. They face their own conflicting perspectives to fight for her release and the future of the places they call home. Balancing compassion for the family with varying opinions about the objectives of the current leadership in Israel and also in the USA, Holding Liat is “powerful and complex… a valuable work, not least for showing us that Israel and Netanyahu are not synonymous.” It has picked up prizes and screened at many prestigious festivals playing throughout 2025 and will open in limited theaters starting in January soon. For anyone interested in real people and real perspectives, this is worth a watch.

Here’s the official trailer (+ poster) for Brandon Kramer’s doc film Holding Liat, direct from YouTube:

In October 2023, 2 weeks after Israeli-American teacher Liat Atzili and her husband Aviv were kidnapped from their kibbutz in southern Israel by Hamas forces, filmmaker Brandon Kramer, a relative, follows the experiences of Liat’s family, providing an intimate & real-time portrait of conflicting views, emotions, and strategies to secure their release. Disappointed & angered by Israel’s response to the attacks, Liat’s father, Yehuda, lobbies members of Congress to prioritize the release of the hostages, criticizes Netanyahu, and advocates for a peaceful reconciliation with Palestinians; Netta, Liat’s son (who narrowly escaped an attack), expresses anger toward Hamas and anti-war protestors; and Liat’s mother Chaya and younger sister Tal both clash with Yehuda and want politics left out of the equation. Holding Liat is directed by American doc filmmaker Brandon Kramer, of the doc films City of Trees and The First Step previously. It’s produced by Darren Aronofsky, Lance Kramer, Yoni Brook, Ari Handel, & Justin A. Gonçalves. MetFilm debuts Holding Liat in select US theaters (at Film Forum first) starting January 9th, 2026 coming soon.

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