After chronicling Jewish history, Oscar-winning filmmaker Richard Trank begins new life in Israel

For decades, Richard Trank helped tell some of the most important stories in Jewish history.

Born and raised in southern California, a son to first-generation immigrants, Trank grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, though his childhood looked much like that of any other California kid.

His father, originally from Slovakia, escaped Europe just before the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. One of his earliest Zionist memories was of an uncle making his way to Mandatory Palestine with the Hashomer Hatza’ir youth movement and helping build a kibbutz.

“I always wanted to tell the story of what happened after ‘they lived happily ever after,’” he said. “Because, in reality, that wasn’t necessarily the case.”

Although Richard Trank grew up in a community outside of LA, largely surrounded by non-Jewish peers, some of his most formative experiences came during summers spent at Camp Hess Kramer, a Jewish camp in Malibu.

“It was the only time of the year where, for a month or so, I was around all Jewish kids,” he recalled.

For Trank, those summers provided something he could not easily find elsewhere: a sense of belonging to a larger Jewish story in which Israel was central. Looking back, he sees them as an early connection to Israel long before he would begin making films about the Jewish state.

After high school, Trank attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied drama and history. Initially, he envisioned a career writing plays before turning to short stories and eventually enrolling in a graduate writing program at the University of Southern California. His goal was simple: to make a living as a writer.

Instead, he found his way into radio journalism.

A chance encounter would change everything.

At the time, activists connected to the Simon Wiesenthal Center were campaigning to remove statutes of limitations for Nazi war criminals in Germany and supporting efforts to identify and deport suspected Nazi perpetrators who had entered the United States. Trank became acquainted with several of the organization’s leaders and was fascinated by their work.

Recognizing the power of radio as a communication tool, they asked him to create a nationally syndicated Jewish public affairs program.

“I thought I would do it for a year or so,” Trank said.

Instead, it became a relationship that lasted more than three decades, one that would repeatedly bring him to Israel and immerse him in the story of the Jewish state.

“I discussed it with Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Wiesenthal Center… How do we tell the story without then getting involved with the intricacies of the Israeli-Arab conflict? That’s when we decided to open the film when the camps were liberated and close it when the State was declared,” he said.

The Oscar-winning film became the official documentary marking Israel’s 50th anniversary in 1998, a moment Trank described as deeply personal.

“It meant the world to me,” he said.

As Trank’s career evolved, his focus increasingly shifted from Holocaust history to the story of Israel itself. What began as an interest in the aftermath of Jewish survival became a deeper exploration of the individuals whose ideas and leadership shaped the modern Jewish state.

“I loved making those movies because the history is fascinating,” Trank said. “It enabled me to be here in Israel a lot and become enmeshed in its story. I also began to see how many Jews outside Israel don’t really understand or appreciate that history. So, I felt like I was contributing something to change that.”

That conviction inspired a trilogy of sorts, films examining three of the most influential figures in modern Jewish history: Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, and Shimon Peres.

For Trank, the journey began with Herzl.

Surprisingly, despite Herzl’s towering place in Jewish history, no major documentary had been devoted entirely to the father of modern political Zionism. Trank set out to change that. Narrated by Ben Kingsley and featuring dramatic readings by Christoph Waltz, the film sought to introduce audiences to the man behind the movement.

The timing was significant. Trank had become increasingly concerned by efforts to distance people from the word “Zionism,” which was beginning to carry negative connotations in many circles.

To Trank, Zionism was not a slogan but a source of hope. It represented the belief that the Jewish people could reclaim agency over their future after centuries of persecution. Having seen how that belief sustained members of his own family and countless Holocaust survivors, he wanted audiences to understand what the term originally meant.

“How could you simply dismiss this word,” he asked, “when it helped people like my family survive?”

The film exceeded expectations. Released in 2012, it resonated with audiences around the world and introduced many viewers to Herzl’s own writings rather than contemporary interpretations of his legacy. Trank said people often emerged from the film with a completely different perspective on both Herzl and the Zionist movement. The movie’s premiere took place at the Tribeca Film Festival, one of the major film festivals on the international circuit.

The production itself revealed unexpected connections. During recording sessions, Christoph Waltz astonished the filmmakers by revealing that his children were Jewish and that his grandparents, actors in Vienna, had actually performed in plays written by Herzl decades earlier and staged at Vienna’s Burgtheater. For Trank, it was yet another reminder of how deeply intertwined Jewish history remains with broader European history.

As work on the Herzl film concluded, Trank turned his attention to another giant of Israeli history: David Ben-Gurion. He began researching a documentary on Israel’s founding prime minister, viewing Ben-Gurion as the practical architect who transformed Herzl’s dream into political reality.

But while production on the Ben-Gurion film was starting, something unexpected happened.

In December 2015, Trank traveled to the Peres Center in Jaffa to interview Shimon Peres, then 92, about Ben-Gurion. Peres was uniquely positioned to discuss him; he was one of the last living leaders who had worked alongside Israel’s founding prime minister.

During the visit, members of Peres’s staff posed a simple question: Why not make a film about Peres himself?

For Trank, the suggestion was irresistible.

“I would love nothing more than to make a film about Shimon Peres,” he remembered telling them.

When they raised the idea with Peres, the former president responded with characteristic modesty.

“Who would go see such a movie?” Peres joked.

Trank and Wiesenthal Center founder Rabbi Hier assured him there was a big audience for such a project.

“We convinced him to make the film,” Trank explained. “We told him it would be our greatest honor.”

The Ben-Gurion documentary was placed on hold. Instead, Trank embarked on what would become one of the most meaningful experiences of his career.

For eight months, he traveled from Los Angeles to Israel roughly once a month, spending one to two weeks at a time with Peres. The interviews ranged far beyond politics. Between takes, the two men discussed family, Jewish history, Israel’s future, and Peres’s lifelong belief in optimism and innovation.

“We finished our principal interviews around his 93rd birthday,” Trank recalled.

The plan was to accompany Peres on a lecture tour to China and continue filming. But just weeks later, before Rosh Hashanah, Peres suffered a stroke and died.

Overnight, the documentary changed from a biography into a tribute.

Netflix acquired the film and made it a Netflix Original. It is one of the most popular documentaries on the streaming platform around the world and in Israel.

Looking back, Trank sees Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and Peres as three chapters of the same story. Herzl articulated the dream. Ben-Gurion built the state. Peres spent his life carrying that vision into the future.

Although Trank often said that Israel was the only place outside America where he could imagine living, aliyah remained more of a dream than a possibility. His career and his children were in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, the idea never disappeared.

But things changed in 2025. After more than three decades at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Trank’s long career there came to an end. His 93-year-old mother had also passed away. His children were established in their careers and living on their own. For the first time, he had the freedom to ask a new question: What comes next?

He started by creating his own independent production company, Sea Point Films and Media. And he began looking for projects to develop and produce, stories like the ones he had been writing and directing for years.

As he was considering which project to start work on first, he and his partner decided to spend an extended period living in Israel. Trank wanted to see if it was realistic to work from Israel and also to experience everyday life in the Jewish state.

“Every time she and I came here, there was always a sadness when we knew we had to leave,” Trank recalled. “This time, very soon after we arrived, we knew that we could easily work and live in a place we had only dreamed about.”

Trank’s career is flourishing in Israel in ways he never expected. He opens up about his next steps in an exclusive to Jerusalem Magazine.

Just before making aliyah, an American nonprofit, Operation Benjamin, engaged him to write and direct a documentary called Always 28. Operation Benjamin was created to right an historical wrong.

Hundreds of American GIs who died during World Wars I and II have been buried under Latin crosses rather than Magen Davids. It has taken on the task of working with families to change those markers at US military cemeteries around the world.

“Always 28 tells the story of Nathan Baskind, who was found in a German military cemetery in France, adjacent to Normandy American Military Cemetery,” Trank said. “His remains were identified using modern-day DNA testing and 80 years to the day he died, and he was finally buried under a Star of David in a Jewish ceremony with full military honors at Normandy.”

As he is busy completing this move for a Fall 2026 premiere, other projects are also on deck, including a narrative drama series – for the first time in his career.

In the next few weeks, with funds secured for development, Trank will be traveling to Greece with a team he has put together to begin location scouting, research, and pre-production for Benmayor, an eight-part drama series.

“One of the least known stories during WWII and the Holocaust involves the Jews of Greece,” he pointed out. “In fact, very little outside of Greece is known about this amazing community.”

Emil and Aris Kakkis, who, like Trank, are first-generation Americans who grew up in Southern California, are the sons and grandsons of Greek Jews who took part in the Greek resistance to the Nazis. They searched out Trank to bring him the story of their grandmother, Elvira, who is the focus of this dramatic and emotional story of survival.

Rick has brought a prominent writer on board who has worked on HBO and Prime for the narrative series that will be filming in Greece and in the next few weeks. He and his team will be traveling there to location scout and to start research and pre-production.

In August, Rick will be filming the final interview in Washington for Always 28, which should then be ready for release in late fall of this year.

Toto and Coco, based on a bestselling book, is a film about a high fashion model in Paris during the 1930’s, Toto Koopman, who became the favorite of fashion designer Coco Chanel. But while Chanel became a Nazi collaborator after the Germans marched into Paris in 1940, Toto became a spy for the British and worked for both the French and Italian resistance.

“It’s an incredible story. An unknown tale of courage during the darkest times of WWII.” Trank is developing it as both a documentary and a drama series.

The Watchmakers, a documentary and drama series based on the bestselling book by Scott Lenga, tells the story of seven brothers whose skills as watchmakers kept them alive in Auschwitz.

“David and I have had a wonderful friendship over the years, going back to when I filmed his sunrise concert at Masada in 1997,” Trank said. When he learned about an amazing effort Broza started to provide guitars to children in need in Israel and North and South America, it became a passion project.

“It’s the story of how music education can inspire children who often have very little in their lives to be hopeful about,” he said.

Trank’s representatives at Evoke Entertainment, a boutique talent management agency based in Hollywood, New York, and Canada, are actively speaking to studios and streamers about production partnerships with him and his production company.

Once again, Theodor Herzl emerges as an inspiration for the writer-director.

“Herzl famously said, ‘If you will it, it is no dream.’ This credo describes what my life has been like since I became an Israeli citizen. The dreams I had for years about living here have become true in more ways than one.”