“Golda,” a film by Israeli director Guy Nattiv, will open the Jerusalem Film Festival on July 13, and will run for 10 days. The film follows Israel’s first woman prime minister during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

British actress Helen Mirren stars as Golda Meir. Co-starring is Jewish-American actor Lieb Shreiber as U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The film is to be released in the United States on August 25, and is scheduled to be streamed on Netflix, Amazon Prime and other platforms.

The selection of Helen Mirren, who is not Jewish, for the role drew some criticism. In February, when the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, Nattiv answered a question from a journalist regarding his choice to cast a non-Jewish actress for the role. “I can tell you,” he said, “when I met Helen, I felt like I was meeting a family member, an aunt…a Jewish person. For me, she had the Jewish chops to play Golda.”                                                                                                                            Photo: Haaretz