Bernard-Henri Lévy - Achievement Award

Venerated French philosopher, writer, filmmaker, political activist, and war correspondent Bernard-Henri Lévy is the Jewish Film Festival’s Guest of Honor

Sunday, 28.11.2021 at 20:00

Screening of THE WILL TO SEE, dir. Bernard-Henri Lévy’s latest film a film filmed in various war torn locations around the globe bearing witness to tremendous human suffering and misery.

Prior to the screening, Bernard-Henri Lévy will receive the Jewish Film Festival’s Achievement Award, presented by the Van Leer Group Foundation on behalf of the Jerusalem Cinematheque. 

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French philosopher, filmmaker, activist and the author of over 30 books.

His most recent book, The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope, was released in October 2021. Some examples of other works include: The Virus in the Age of Madness (2020), The Empire and the Five Kings (2019), and American Vertigo, Traveling America in the footsteps of Tocqueville (2005). He followed the trail of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan to research his book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (2003). 

Lévy’s work as an intellectual and writer is uniquely intertwined with humanitarian activism.

His latest film, The Will to See, follows Lévy in the year 2020 as he bore witness and reported from countries around the world overcome with suffering and disrupted by war. His past film, Peshmerga, premiered as Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival. He was embedded, in 2016, by the Kurdish and Iraqi forces liberating Mosul. Out of this unique experience, came another film, The Battle of Mosul, which is the only first-hand account of the fall of the Caliphate’s capital. Previous films include The Oath of Tobruk (Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2012) on the Libyan intervention against dictator Moammar Gaddafi and Bosna! on the siege of Sarajevo.

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a devoted Zionist. His book, The Genius of Judaism (2017), is an ode to the exceptionalism of Israel and the grandeur of Jewish thought. He is widely regarded as one of the West’s most important public intellectuals.