Golda Movie Premier Resources and Information

Golda Premier

Use this page as an information and resource page for everything Golda!

Written and Directed By Academy Award-winning, Israeli Filmmaker, Guy Nattiv (SKIN).
|Starring Oscar and BAFTA-winning actress, Helen Mirren (THE QUEEN, 1923), Liev Schreiber (A SMALL LIGHT, RAY DONOVAN), Lior Ashkenazi (FOOTNOTE) and Camille Cottin (STILLWATER).

World Premiere: 2023 Berlin Film Festival. Watch the full Press Conference here. Watch highlights here.

Official Summary:

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 complete 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.

INTERESTING FACTS TO SHARE

Helen Mirren won an Oscar and Critica Choice Award for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in THE QUEEN (2006).
In 2015, Helen Mirren was honored at 29th Israel Film Festival (IFF) in Los Angeles alongside American screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. 'The great thing that Israel has is Israelis, and they will guide it through,' Mirren said upon accepting the Career Achievement Award.

Mirren spent about a month on Kibbutz in Israel and is very vocal about how much she loves Israel.

Helen Mirren was awarded the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.

Liev Schreiber's mother is from a working-class Jewish family from Poland and Ukraine, while his father is from an upper-class Protestant family. He grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Liev's first name is often mispronounced as "leave" or "LEE-ev." It is actually pronounced "lee-EV.".

For the genealogy fans curious if Helen might have Jewish blood, check out this info shared by a friend at JewishGen.org. I will ask him for the source.

Helen Lydia Mironoff.

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff on 26 July 1945 at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in the Hammersmith district of London, to an English mother and Russian father. Her mother, Kathleen "Kitty" Alexandrina Eva Matilda (née Rogers; 1908–1996), was a working-class woman from West Ham, the thirteenth of fourteen children born to a butcher whose own father was the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren's father, Vasily Petrovich Mironoff (1913–1980), was a member of an exiled family of the Russian nobility; he was taken to England when he was two by his father, Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov. Pyotr Mironov, who owned a family estate near Gzhatsk (now Gagarin), was part of the Russian aristocracy. His mother, Mirren's great-grandmother, was Countess Lydia Andreevna Kamenskaya, an aristocrat and a descendant of Count Mikhail Fedotovich Kamensky, a prominent Russian general in the Napoleonic Wars. Pyotr Mironov served as a colonel in the Imperial Russian Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He became a diplomat and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain when he and his family were stranded by the Russian Revolution in 1917. He settled in England and became a London cab driver to support his family.

Vasily Mironoff also played the viola with the London Philharmonic Orchestra before World War II. He was an ambulance driver during the war, and served in the East End of London during the Blitz. He and Kathleen Rogers married in Hammersmith in 1938, and at some point before 1951 he anglicised his first name to Basil. Shortly after Helen's birth, her father left the orchestra and returned to driving a cab to support the family. He later worked as a driving-test examiner, then became a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. In 1951, he changed the family name to Mirren by deed poll. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist". She was the second of three children; she has an older sister Katherine ("Kate"; born 1942) and had a younger brother Peter Basil (1947–2002).[24] Her paternal cousin was Tania Mallet, a model and Bond girl. Mirren was brought up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.

Current News and FYI

GOLDA will open the 2023 Jerusalem Film Festival, on July 13th. Tickets are available here. Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber and Lior Ashkenazi are expected to join Director Guy Nattiv at the festival. Oliver Stone is also attending. Helen will receive an award from the festival. More info here.

The 2023 Golda Meir Commemorative Coin Act. The bi-partisan supported bill being discussed can be seen here. In 1978, Golda Meir was honored by the Jewish-American Hall of Fame with their Public Service Award; beautiful medals were minted. She passed away later that year.

We are approaching the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War - September 24/25, 2023.

Former US Secretary of State to President Nixon, Henry Kissinger, played by Liev Schreiber in the film, just turned 100 years old. A centenarian, Kissinger is the oldest living former U.S. Cabinet member and the last surviving member of Nixon's Cabinet.

Israel recently declassified a trove of documents related to the Yom Kippur War.

The GOLDA SUMMER PROJECT (KAYITZ ZAHAV) will launch on August 1st, in partnership with the Golda Meir House Museum and Jewish/Israeli organizations from around the USA. Videos about Golda Meir linked to her history and the Yom Kippur War will be shared weekly. Golda Shabbat Parsha Sheets will be shared once a week to encourage discussions about Golda Meir and Israel's history in the 1960's and 70's, over Shabbat and in groups. More information is coming soon.
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