UPHEAVAL

About the Film

Documentary | 87 MIN | US

Looking back at his legacy in a new light, one of Israel’s most venerated but complex and controversial leaders receives an incisive portrait. Menachem Begin was a proud pillar of the State of Israel, fiercely devoted to the Jewish people. Jailed in a Soviet gulag for pre-war Zionist activities and scarred by loss in the Holocaust, he founded the right-wing Likud party, and was vilified as a fascist and terrorist by critics. Yet Begin is remembered as among Israel’s most democratic prime ministers for defending Jewish immigration and signing the historic peace accord with Egypt. Rarely seen archival materials and astute interviews offer rich, nuanced insights into a mesmerizing political figure born into war, but who never ceded the hope for peace.

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