BERLIN — They stood exterior Berlin’s Babylon theater, bundled in opposition to the chilly, laughing and dragging on cigarettes: the Cunio twins David and Eitan, and their youthful brother Ariel.
David and Ariel had been among the many final Israeli hostages launched in October from Hamas captivity, after 738 days. Their presence in Berlin — for a screening of a movie about them, now recut with a redemptive ending — felt virtually like an apparition. On the opposite facet of two heavy glass doorways had been tons of of theatergoers, individuals who had lengthy waited for this second.
The brothers and their prolonged household had been in Berlin for a second premiere of Tom Shoval’s movie “Letter to David.” The unique movie, proven in 2025 on the Berlin Worldwide Movie Pageant, or Berlinale, dove deep into the struggles of a household whose members had been kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023. By then, six kidnapped family members, together with three youngsters, had been freed. However David and Ariel remained in captivity.
“Final yr I used to be standing earlier than the screening with a poster of David and Ariel. I used to be decided, each time I confirmed the movie, to say that it’s an unfinished movie,” Shoval informed the sold-out viewers on the theater in former East Berlin.
“And now I’m standing right here. I’ve David within the viewers, and I’ve Ariel within the viewers,” he continued. “This can be a valuable, valuable second.”
The movie “is a testomony to like, hope and all of the individuals who didn’t quit in the course of the two years I used to be in captivity,” David Cunio stated in Hebrew, standing on the stage together with his prolonged household. “You gave me a voice once I couldn’t be current. You had been there for me.”
The movie’s second displaying got here as tensions over the battle in Gaza and Germany’s assist for Israel roiled the Berlinale. After the jury’s president, director Wim Wenders, dismissed a journalist’s exhortation for the pageant to take a stand in opposition to Israel, the Indian creator Arundhati Roy introduced she wouldn’t attend, and a few 80 filmmakers and stars signed an open letter of protest.
Pageant director Tricia Tuttle issued a press release saying that “artists shouldn’t be anticipated to touch upon all broader debates a couple of pageant’s earlier or present practices over which they haven’t any management. Nor ought to they be anticipated to talk on each political subject raised to them except they need to.”
Abdallah Alkhatib (2nd from proper), director of the movie “Chronicles from the Siege” receives the GWFF Greatest Function Movie Debut Award whereas holding up a Palestinian flag on stage in the course of the award ceremony on the closing gala within the Berlinale Palast, Berlin, Feb. 22, 2026. (Christoph Soeder/image alliance by way of Getty Photos)
Journalists and filmmakers continued to boost the difficulty, even on the pageant’s remaining weekend, when some award winners — together with the Syrian-Palestinian director Abdullah Al-Khatib, who received finest debut movie — swatted again on the pageant jury, criticizing what they see as Germany’s normal assist for Israel. Al-Khatib’s allegation that Germany has been “companions within the genocide in Gaza by Israel” prompted a German minister to stroll out of the awards ceremony on Sunday.
Friday’s screening of “Letter to David” was in contrast a love fest, and the 2 police automobiles out entrance and uniformed officers circulating inside appeared to have little to do. The viewers gave all the household a standing ovation earlier than the screening.
“I believe it is a piece of historical past,” viewers member Nirit Bialer, an Israeli who has lived for years in Berlin, stated in an interview. “Simply seeing the household, and simply following the story about this household on the media, going to the Hostages Sq. in Israel each time I used to be there within the final two years: Wow, I’m speechless.”
The movie’s unique ending confirmed twins David and Eitan Cunio as actors, grappling with one another in an embrace that’s each tender and violent, in a scene from Shoval’s function movie, “Youth,” screened on the Berlinale in 2013.
That ending now segues into a brand new conclusion, wherein the reunited Cunio household embraces. In addition they view the movie collectively, and Shoval captures their faces because the projector beams from behind.
Shoval stated in an interview that he had not modified something within the first a part of the movie. “I wished to go away it as a time capsule, in a method, of how we perceived it again a yr in the past,” he stated.
Düzen Tekkal, Christian Berkel, Andrea Sawatzki and Ulrich Matthes maintain up indicators studying “Carry David Cunio Dwelling” on the pink carpet in the course of the seventy fifth Berlinale Worldwide Movie Pageant Berlin, Feb. 13, 2025. (Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis by way of Getty Photos)
Although he had been invited to be with the household at their reunion, he selected to not, explaining, “I believed it’s a second that belongs to them and to not me.”
However he spoke with David quickly after he was launched. And shortly afterward, he visited Sharon and David Cunio at their residence. “I got here within the morning and we sat till sundown collectively and we talked. Even once I’m desirous about it now, I’m getting emotional, as a result of it was actually…” He paused. “You’re ready for a second for this for therefore lengthy.”
The Friday screening was not an official a part of the Berlinale, however the beleaguered pageant director Tuttle made a degree of taking the stage herself. The movie has been “completed in the best way that Tom solely hoped and dreamed and believed that he would be capable to end it,” she informed the viewers.
“We had been horrified together with the world and all of you when David Cunio and plenty of members of his household had been kidnapped by Hamas,” she stated. And on their launch “we rejoiced with everybody as effectively.”
Saying that the brand new model was accomplished too late to be included within the pageant schedule, Tuttle thanked two co-production firms that work carefully with Israeli artists for backing Friday’s screening: the Israel-based Inexperienced Productions and the Berlin-based Future Narrative Fund.
Viewers members appeared loath to go away the theater after the screening, lingering over what some described as mixture of happiness and fear.
“The truth that David is ready to see the film makes us see the film differently,” commented Konstantin, who had seen the unique model final yr. A younger Jewish actor who lives in Berlin, he requested that his full title not be used, out of issues about antisemitism. “With the ending, it’s like a full circle, accomplished.”
Israeli director Tom Shoval presenting his movie “A Letter to David” two subsequent Berlinales, as seen in Berlin on Feb. 13, 2025. (John MacDougall / AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Seeing the movie once more with the Cunio household current “was very uplifting and really blissful,” stated Berliner Julia Kopp, who additionally noticed the movie final yr. “However on the identical time, it’s not a cheerful ending … I even have a little bit of a heavy coronary heart,” worrying about “how life will go on for them.”
Each brothers have indicated that reentry into on a regular basis life has been difficult after two years of captivity for them and two years of traumatized advocacy by their family members. And Ariel Cunio and his companion Arbel Yehud, who was held in captivity till January, have raised practically $1.8 million since launching a crowdfunding marketing campaign final week aimed toward permitting them the time and area to “come again to life.”
A crowdfunding marketing campaign launched on behalf of David and Sharon Cunio their twin daughters, additionally former hostages, says, “The household not solely has to take care of the trauma that follows being held hostage and the occasions that transpired on October seventh, but in addition must rebuild their whole lives from scratch.”
Shoval stated the movie — and the screening — provided a imaginative and prescient for what a extra settled future may seem like.
“For me, the movie is in regards to the unification of the brotherhood, and what which means to be torn other than one another, but in addition to get again,” Shoval stated. “They will sit within the theater and so they can see themselves. They will see what they missed, what occurred. They will mission in regards to the previous, in regards to the current. This can be a energy of cinema, I really feel. It felt pure for me to do this: to convey them again.”
