Bleecker Street shared the official trailer Golda, the biopic drama set during the Yom Kippur War starring Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female Prime Minister.
Also starring in the film are Camille Cottin, Rami Heuberger, Ohad Knoller, Lior Ashkenazi, Dominic Mafham, Ellie Piercy, Ed Stoppard, Rotem Keinan, Dvir Benedek, Ben Caplan, Kit Rakusen, Emma Davies, Liev Schreiber, and Jaime Ray Newman.
Release Date
Directed by Guy Nattiv, Golda world premiered at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, and opens in theaters with a release date of August 25, 2023.
Synopsis
Golda is a ticking-clock thriller set during the tense 19 days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren), faced with the potential of Israel’s total destruction, must navigate overwhelming odds, a skeptical cabinet, and a complex relationship with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber), with millions of lives in the balance. Her tough leadership and compassion would ultimately decide the fate of her nation and leave her with a controversial legacy around the world.
Reviews
Variety’s review heralded Helen Mirren’s acting, writing, “Mirren makes her terse, decisive, and ferociously alive, always a step ahead of the Israeli military officers in the room — a matriarch with the toughness of a buzzard. (David Ben-Gurion meant it as a compliment when he called Meir “the only man in my cabinet.”) There’s been controversy about the casting of Mirren, since she is neither Israeli nor Jewish. But why quibble when it comes down to a great actor giving a performance that’s this authentic? The way Mirren plays it, Meir’s humanity is always there — the distress she feels at losing even one soldier is the current of her being — yet so is her ruthless pragmatism. She’s fighting for the survival of her nation, and she’ll spill a great deal of blood to do it. She’ll be called on the carpet for the orders she gives (a year later we see her answering questions before an investigative committee, after she has resigned as prime minister). Those decisions tear at her gut. But that’s what the movie is about. In “Golda,” the fog of war becomes the gnarly upset stomach of war.”
The Guardian’s review, however, called the film ‘bafflingly dull,’ writing, “As a war movie, it’s bafflingly dull; as a political-intrigue drama, it’s lifeless; as a personal portrait of Meir, it’s inert and superficial. Mirren’s portrayal is finally upstaged by archive news footage of the real prime minister animatedly laughing and joking and upstaging Egypt’s Sadat at the peace accord – with a thousand times more energy and presence than the fictional version.Why couldn’t the film have dramatised this scene and given Mirren a chance to shine?”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for Golda: