Tom Shoval's ‘A Letter to David' Cunio, a Hamas Hostage, Explores the Connection Between Life and Cinema

Yahoo

13-02-2025

The victims and survivors of the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 are not forgotten, and filmmaker Tom Shoval wants to make sure it stays that way. In A Letter to David (Michtav Le'David), which counts Nancy Spielberg, sister of Steven Spielberg, among its producers and which gets its world premiere in the Berlinale Special program on Friday, he shares a personal cinematic note to David Cunio, who has been held hostage by Hamas since being taken from the Nir Oz kibbutz that day.
'Ten years ago, David and his twin brother Eitan starred in Shoval's award-winning debut feature film Youth (Berlinale 2013), which focused on the powerful bond between brothers and, in a tragic and unimaginable twist of fate, revolved around a kidnapping,' explains a summary of the film that world premieres at the 75th edition of the Berlin Film Festival. 'Through unedited behind-the-scenes footage and audition tapes from that film, Shoval creates a multi-layered documentary that explores profound questions about the inexplicable connections between life and cinema, memory and reality, and the catastrophic consequences of war.'
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Produced by Israel's Green Productions and Playmount Productions in New York, Shoval wrote and directed the film. The producers are Alona Refua, Maya Fischer, Roy Bareket and Spielberg.
'I met David and his brother Eitan when I cast my first movie Youth. And I was drawn to this strong connection they have as brothers. You could just feel it,' Shoval tells THR. 'The brothers helped me get my start in film. I will forever be thankful for that. So when I heard that David and his brother Ariel were taken hostage, I wanted to do whatever I could to shine a light on this.'
Spielberg was in Israel to visit her daughter when the horrors of Oct. 7 unfolded. 'As an American, you are not used to hearing 'Lock yourself into your safe room for a few days.' I just wanted to get out,' she recalls. 'What I experienced and saw is not something you forget. So I really wanted to get involved in an Oct. 7 film but one that focuses on a personal story, not the numbers and the politics.'
After Jake Paltrow, Gwyneth Paltrow's brother, told her she should meet Shoval, whe discovered the two had the same vision for the film. 'Tom reminds me of my brother. He is very sensitive,' Spielberg tells THR.
'I couldn't ask for a better collaborator than Nancy,' adds Shoval. 'This was a bit of a dream come true, but the fact that she understood so vividly what I meant with staying humane and not getting into any other territories that people expected us to go into was what I needed to make this happen. This film would have never happened without her.'
What they both envisioned was a human story that avoids much of the violence, conflict and rhetoric shown in newscasts.
'We didn't want to show the violence of the 7th of October mainly because what we are seeing in the news is taking away what is behind this violence. There are people, human beings, and they have characters, and they have motivations, and they have stuff that they love and stuff that they hate, and they are complex people,' explains Shoval. 'And if you just see the violence, and you just see the faces on the posters, you don't get the humanity, the human tragedy that is behind all of this. I wanted people to know some of these people as intimately as I know David, so that they understand that we are all human beings. We want to live a normal life as everybody else.'
He adds: 'I would rather see beyond that very graphic violence and try, through cinema, to create a vision in your head and in your heart that will say: 'Oh, these are the people. This is where they were living. This is what they did.''
Spielberg loved the approach. 'When I was looking for an Oct. 7 story, because I was so consumed with it, I felt I couldn't spend three years in an editing room on this topic. I don't think I would be able to pull myself out and go live my life. I really thought it would just make me too sick because of the trauma,' she tells THR. 'But this was such a kind way [into the subject]. Film is an empathy machine, especially when you see these carefree young guys who were finding joy in an orange pulled off of the tree and you see where they hung out and barbecued. That was their utopia. And David is a person who couldn't even act violent in a movie, so you see that contrast of who this happened to, and it happened to so many people in the South of Israel who were peaceniks. These were the people that were hoping for a better life for everybody.'
As much as the film talks about Oct. 7 and what happened to David, 'it's also about two brothers being torn apart,' making it a more universal story, Shoval emphasizes. 'This connection is so vivid in the film. This makes what happened more violent than any other thing. You feel how Eitan, the brother who stayed behind, is longing for the return of his brother.'
Spielberg hopes the film will also encourage viewers to look for things they have in common. 'We need to find a way for humanity to get back on the same page, to stop all this divisiveness and hate everywhere in the world. It's just so polarized,' she says. 'I say this a lot, also about Holocaust films: don't look at the numbers, look at the individuals. Connect to somebody. Find something you have in common with that person. Find that empathy, listen to their voices and hopefully they will listen to yours and have some kind of dialog. I'm hoping that maybe there's a way to bring some light into this and find some healing.'
Working on A Letter to David made Shoval see the role of cinema in a new light. 'The film taught me a lot about how I perceive cinema, and what cinema is to me,' he tells THR. 'In a way, I feel that reality and cinema are two twin brothers. They are connected. And as we see in the film, you can take them apart, but they belong to each other.'
There is hope that David and Ariel Cunio will be freed in a new round of hostage releases as part of a ceasefire deal this weekend. 'But you never know,' Shoval notes.
He ends our conversation with an appeal. 'Please return David and his brother Ariel so they can be together, and so the normality of life can return continue, and that cinema and reality live together side by side without separation.'
Watch the trailer for A Letter to David below.
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