Tuesday night, on the one-month anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern and central Israel that sparked the nation’s biggest conflict in 50 years, an audience gathered at the Linwood Dunn Theater of the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Studies in Hollywood for a packed industry screening of – and panel discussion following – the powerful biopic “Golda” starring Helen Mirren in the title role as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The eerie timeliness of the film couldn’t have been known when it was released in the United States on August 25, nor in the UK on October 6 (the day before the conflict was launched). “Golda” tells the story of how Meir, ill with malignant lymphoma, runs interference during the tense 19 days of the Yom Kippur War in ’73. Mirren, thanks to a masterful make-up job by the Bleecker Street movie’s hair, makeup and prosthetics designer Karen Hartley-Thomas, is transformed into the chain-smoking Israeli leader for the duration of the film’s 100 minutes. Mirren and Hartley-Thomas along with the Israeli-born “Golda” director Guy Nattiv all were present Tuesday for the post-screening panel talk that was made possible by the fact the film was made internationally (in London) and not under a SAG contract as the SAG-AFTRA walkout continues. A complete article on the Q&A can be read over at GoldDerby. A clip can be watched in the video archive.

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