Jonathan Jakubowicz
Jonathan Jakubowicz is Venezuela's most celebrated 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 minutes standing ovation. It's the first Latin movie to have a simultaneous wide release in all of Latin America. The film tells the story of how Roberto Duran beats many US fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, which made it celebrated by audiences world wide but earned the movie a mixed reception in the United States. While top critics like Richard Roeper, Pete Travers from Rolling Stone and Stephanie Zacharek from Time Magazine gave it rave reviews, calling it a return to greatness for De Niro and a revelation for Ramirez, some others found it difficult to relate to a fighter that was beating Americans.
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.
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