Lawrence Bender, who produced “Inglorious Basterds” and “Pulp Fiction,” won the Israel Film Festival’s 2026 visionary award earlier this week for the four-part television series about the Oct. 7 attacks “Red Alert,” of which he was executive producer.  

“I’ve been making movies for many decades now,” Bender told JNS on the red carpet at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Calif., on the festival’s opening night on Feb. 4. “But nothing could have prepared me for what happened on Oct. 8.”

Bender said that it feels “really great” to receive the award. “When I’m doing something with Israel, it makes me feel extra special,” he told JNS.

While filming in Israel last year—his first time in the Jewish state since Oct. 7—the producer, who is used to doing the shooting, experienced being shot at.

“I’ve never had someone shoot an intercontinental ballistic missile towards me,” he told JNS. “It’s very odd. It’s a messed up feeling.”

He added on the red carpet that the show was “life changing” for him and that he was “honored” to have the “real people that the actors were playing” on set as they filmed. The show had strong ratings in Israel, and Paramount-plus was “very happy,” he said.

Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, whose work includes “Reading Lolita in Tehran” (2024) and “The Syrian Bride” (2004), was also on hand, after winning the festival’s 2026 cinematic achievement award.

“It’s thrilling. It’s nice to get recognition,” he told JNS on the red carpet. “It was nice to share it with Lawrence Bender.”

The 2024 film, which is based on Iranian writer Azar Nafisi’s 2003 memoir “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” is being screened as part of the festival in Los Angeles. It portrays Iran in the 1980s and 90s, and it’s “sad” that the situation has become “much worse” under the Islamic Republic, Riklis told JNS.

“Maybe a small difference is that the resilience is stronger, and I think the fight against the suppression is getting stronger and stronger,” he said. “It’s a very tough regime. It’s not easy to get rid of them.”

‘A shining light’

Bender told JNS that it was “extra important” for him to attend the festival given that “Hollywood wrote this letter, and they signed a boycott for Israeli filmmakers.” 

More than 5,000 members of the international film industry signed an open letter stating they won’t work with Israeli film institutions that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” 

“There’s a horrific regime in Iran, the regime there has killed thousands and thousands of innocent people, and nobody speaks out and we don’t write letters against their filmmakers,” Bender told JNS. “So why do they do that about the Israeli government? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“The festival is “a shining light,” he said.

Riklis told JNS that the boycott didn’t impact his work, but “boycotting is one of the most ridiculous things you can even think of.”

“We’re talking about artists. Artists have at least good intentions. Whether they execute them or not is a different question, but I think the idea, as always, when you make a film or you write a book or you write an article or whatever it is, you have an intention of maybe doing some good for this world,” he said. “What’s the point of boycotting somebody like me?”

Riklis thinks that the festival, which sold out the 2,000-capacity theater, sends the message that “we’re strong” and “we’re also sensitive.” The films screened in the festival show “the complexity” and “the many sides of Israel.”

“It’s not easy to be Israel right now on many levels,” he said. “To bring the voice of reason, to bring sanity into this chaos, is probably what we have to do, and I think this festival is part of it.”

Israel Bachar, Israel’s consul general to the Pacific Southwest, told JNS before he spoke at the event that “the Israeli film and television industry is here in Hollywood, and it’s not going anywhere.”

“We need to continue to create, to produce, be creative and compete for the eyeballs of the Americans,” he said. “We must continue this tradition.”

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