Jonathan Jakubowicz

Jonathan Jakubowicz is a Venezuelan filmmaker and writer, winner of the German Film Peace Prize 2020 for his film "Resistance", and one of the "100 people who most positively influenced Jewish life in 2020" according to the Algemeiner Foundation. His film Secuestro Express was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the British Independent Film Awards[1] and was a New York Times "Critics' Pick" in 2005.[2] He is of Polish-Jewish descent.[3]

Jakubowicz at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

Career

Secuestro Express became the nation's biggest box office hit at that time, to the dismay of then-President Hugo Chávez, whose government opened two trials against Jakubowicz, who was forced to leave Venezuela. [4]

His film, Hands of Stone (2016), is about the relationship between Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán (played by Édgar Ramírez) and his trainer Ray Arcel (played by Robert De Niro).[5] Hands of Stone premiered in the Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was warmly received with a 15-minute standing ovation. It's the first Latin movie to have a simultaneous wide release in all of Latin America.[6][7][8][9]

Hands of Stone also landed Jakubowicz in political activism when it was invited and then pulled from the official selection of the Havana Film Festival after Jakubowicz made comments denouncing censorship for Cuban filmmakers in the Island.

His latest film Resistance starring Jesse Eisenberg, who played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Ed Harris, Edgar Ramirez, Clemence Poesy and others. It tells the story of a group of boys and girls scouts who saved thousands of orphans during the Holocaust. One of them was the legendary resistance fighter Georges Loinger, who met with Jakubowicz and helped him with the research of the film, before he died on December 28, 2018. Georges Loinger was the first cousin of Marcel Marceau and died at 108 years of age.

Resistance was released in the United States on March 27, 2020, by IFC Films during the Coronavirus epidemic, and it became the number one theatrical movie in America for two weeks in a row. Most multiplexes were closed, and only a few independent and Drive-in theaters remained opened, which gave Resistance the most unusual top box office spot of all time. The film was awarded The German Film Peace Prize 2020. And it was in the official selection of the Shanghai Film Festival, The Munich Film Festival, and the Festival du Cinema Americain de Deauville, among others.[10]

Novels

In November 2016, Jakubowicz published his first novel Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard, which became a best seller in the Spanish language market. In Venezuela, the book broke sales records and was read in public gatherings, as well as on a community of fifty thousand people that define themselves as "resistance to the Maduro dictatorship (Resistencia Venezuela hasta los tuétanos)", on the app Zello.

In July 2020, Jakubowicz published La Venganza de Juan Planchard, the sequel to his first novel. It immediately rose to the #1 spot in of Best Sellers in Spanish Language Fiction, in Amazon.

Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard was adapted for the stage by 2016 National Medal of Arts award winning theater director Moisés Kaufman at Manhattan’s Tectonic Theater Project. [11]

References
  1. Vázquez, Mercedes. His film "Resistance" won the German Film Peace Prize 2020, and the "Voice of Humanity Award" given by the Algemeiner foundation. His film "Hands of Stone" was in the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival 2016. And his two novels from the series "The Adventures of Juan Planchard" are International Best Sellers in Spanish Language. "Secuestro Express and La clase: politics of realism in contemporary Venezuelan filmmaking." Archived 2011-06-13 at the Wayback Machine Jump Cut. 52: Summer 2010. Retrieved 22 August 2010.
  2. Kern, Laura. "Movie Review: Secuestro Express (2004), NYT Critics' Pick". The New York Times. 5 August 2005. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
  3. King, Michael. "'Secuestro Express': Jonathan Jakubowicz and Elizabeth Avellán on Venezuela's surprise hit". The Austin Chronicle. 28 October. Retrieved 28 September 2016.
  4. Forero, Juan (October 6, 2005). "Venezuelan Filmmaker Finds His Kidnapping Tale Resonates With the Masses". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  5. https://www.vulture.com/2013/04/robert-de-niro-boxing-movies.html
  6. http://www.morphizm.com/recommends/interviews/orozco_fastalker.html
  7. http://movies.about.com/od/directorinterviews/a/jakbwicz072805.html
  8. http://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/hands-of-stone-as-roberto-duran-ramirez-boxes-like-a-champ/
  9. http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/movies/hands-of-stone-review-robert-de-niro-returns-to-greatness-as-he-steps-back-into-ring
  10. https://deadline.com/2018/10/ed-harris-edgar-ramirez-clemence-poesy-jesse-eisenberg-resistance-marcel-marceau-afm- Resistance Movies: 2004 Secuestro Express Director 2016 Hands of Stone Director 2019 Resistance Director 1202491944/
  11. "Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard". Tectonic Theater Project. Tectonic Theater Project. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.