Jonathan Jakubowicz

Jonathan Jakubowicz is a Venezuelan filmmaker and writer, whose film Secuestro Express was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the British Independent Film Awards and was a New York Times "Critics' Pick" in 2005. He is Jewish of Polish descent. Secuestro Express became the nation's biggest box office hit of all time, which enraged then-President Hugo Chavez, whose government opened two trials against Jakubowicz, who was forced to leave Venezuela. His latest film, Hands of Stone (2016), is about the relationship between Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán (played by Édgar Ramírez) and his trainer Ray Arcel (played by Robert De Niro). Hands of Stone premiered in the Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was warmly received with a 15-minute standing ovation. It's the first Latin movie to have a simultaneous wide release in all of Latin America. Hands of Stone also landed Jakubowicz in political controversy when it was invited and then pulled from the official selection of the Havana Film Festival after Jakubowicz made comments denouncing censorship for Cuban filmmakers in the Island. In November 2016 Jakubowicz published his first novel Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard and it immediately became a best seller in the Spanish Language market. In Venezuela the book sparked unprecedented success, not only in the record breaking sales but also in the amount of public gatherings to read it. One community of fifty thousand people that define themselves as "resistance to the Maduro dictatorship (Resistencia Venezuela hasta los tuétanos)", read the book aloud every night on the encrypted frequency of the app Zello. The book is on its way to become the biggest Best Seller of all time for a Venezuelan author. During the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, Jakubowicz announced his next movie called "Resistance". Starring Jesse Eisemberg, the movie tells the true story of Marcel Marceau and his involvement in the French Resistance during WWII. The film will shoot in early 2018 and has Baptiste Marceau, the son of the legendary Mime, as Executive Producer.