‘A Letter to David’ Director Tom Shoval and Producer Nancy Spielberg on Transcending ‘Carnage’ in Their Homage to Hamas Hostage David Cunio
Israeli director Tom Shoval is back in Berlin with “A Letter to David,” which is his way of processing the fact that his friend David Cunio – who starred in his first feature “Youth” – is one of the more than 250 hostages kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, from the Nir Oz kibbutz.
David Cunio and his younger brother Ariel are among hostages yet to be freed.
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In what turned out to be a tragic twist, “Youth” – which premiered in Berlin’s Panorama section in 2013 – starred Cunio and his brother Eitan as two brothers who kidnap a rich schoolgirl in a harebrained scheme to pay off family debts.
“A Letter to David” uses behind-the-scenes footage and audition tapes from “Youth” to create a multi-layered documentary that explores connections between life and cinema and looks at the human side of trauma created by acts of terror.
Variety speaks to Shoval and Nancy Spielberg, who is Steven Spielberg’s sister, about how they teamed up on “A Letter to David,” which is “a cry for help, and also a cry for a dialogue,” says Shoval.
Obviously the film is prompted by something horrible. How did it germinate conceptually?
Tom Shoval
A few days after October 7 happened I was feeling very helpless. And I found myself trying to navigate what I should do with what had happened to my friend and creative colleague who played in my [first] film and actually gave me my filmmaking vocation, because his trust in me was so big. When I talked to Sylvia, David’s mother, she told me: “please let the world know what is going on, so that nobody will forget David and his brother Ariel!”
So I was contemplating all that, and I said that I want to kind of share it with David: all these thoughts. And kind of try to send him some signals. Hopefully he will hear me. So it was a cry for help, and also a cry for a dialogue.
In “Youth” David was the kidnapper. Would you say that is the creative core of the film?
Yes. It was so vivid to me that I needed to use that material, to kind of convey what is going on. And also because we know so little, we don’t have any interaction with him. We only have our imagination and cinema. So I was fixating with that. And then I found this box full of cassettes of this kind of a behind-the scenes film that we had shot back then, but never used.
The editing process was very intimate for me because I had to put myself inside it and to see this material with all that it means in hindsight. With the understanding that I need to also talk about what happened on October 7 and talking with the family and going with them to these places, knowing how difficult it is. So all of that became the movie. Another element is that I didn’t want in any way to show the October 7 footage since it was shown in the news and everywhere. This kind of carnage; this condensed brutal violence, which I thought was blinding. You can’t really see anything. You just see the sheer horror. And I wanted to gap this. I wanted to go beyond it and try to show the people that were dealing with that and what happened to them as human beings. And try to convey this emotional moment in their life. This is how it all kind of tied together.
Nancy, how did you come on board?
Nancy Spielberg
Spielbergs don’t really like to be in the midst of drama, though we’re a very dramatic family. But I was in Israel on October 7, and I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of threat. Maybe 9/11 was sort of close because I live in New York. But I was really shaken. So yes, I saw all that footage and it was almost like on a loop, and it just kept fuelling all the trauma. In any case, I was affected by it in a way that I’ve never been affected by anything. And I wanted to do a film on October 7, but I didn’t think I was emotionally strong enough to do the harsh films with that kind of footage. We’re friends with Jake Paltrow, and he’s also very close with my brother. And I was with Jake in Manhattan when we had just come back from Israel, talking to him and sharing: What has happened in this world? And then he contacted me a couple weeks later and said: “You need to talk to Tom.”
I’m really so grateful because it’s exactly the way I want to picture this story. I want to look at a human being. It’s like how I do Holocaust stories. I don’t want to look at a number. I don’t want to turn it into an impersonal: how many died here? I want to look at the person, find that empathy.
How did you feel about the fact that Berlin’s artistic director was part of the silent vigil for David and Ariel on the red carpet?
Spielberg
I didn’t know she was going to do that. I was thrilled because I think it actually positioned the film exactly the way Tom wanted: Look at the face of this person with his three-year-old twins. Focus on that instead of the politics. It’s hard to escape the politics, but really I think that helps set this film on the right foot.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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