A titan of the stage and screen, Dame Helen Mirren turns her formidable talent to a challenging new role in her latest biopic: that of Israel’s first (and so far only) female prime minister, Golda Meir – a role that has not been without controversy, since Mirren is not Jewish (the film’s Israeli director, Guy Nattiv, has pointed out that it was Meir’s own family who suggested Mirren).
Often referred to as the “Iron Lady of Israel”, Meir was elected to office at the grand age of 70 and most notably led the country through the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. It’s this tense three-week conflict which Nicholas Martin’s sombre script zeroes in on, with an extremely potted history of the Israeli state offered in the film’s opening montage.
