Crystal City Entertainment Working on Yardena Schwartz’s Film Adaptation of ‘Ghosts Of A Holy War’
Crystal City Entertainment to Develop Film Adaptation of Award-Winning Book on the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Crystal City Entertainment, led by Jonathan Rubenstein, is set to adapt Yardena Schwartz’s bestseller, Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, into a narrative feature film.
The book offers a thoroughly researched and balanced examination of the Arab-Israeli conflict’s origins, focusing specifically on the little-known 1929 Hebron massacre. Through a combination of historical records, personal accounts, and previously undiscovered letters, Schwartz sheds light on this pivotal event.
The project began when a family in Memphis, Tennessee, uncovered a box of century-old letters in their attic. This discovery inspired Schwartz to delve into the life of the young author of the letters, who perished during the massacre in 1929. By integrating these letters with extensive archival research and interviews with current Israeli and Palestinian residents of Hebron, Schwartz narrates the historical context and repercussions of the massacre. She draws parallels between the haunting echoes of the 1929 event and the recent Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, suggesting that understanding these historical dynamics is essential for future peace efforts.
Rubenstein and Ari Pinchot will produce the film under the Crystal City Entertainment banner.
Schwartz, who has spent a decade based in Israel and has reported from around the world, has contributed to various prominent publications, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, she received an Emmy nomination during her tenure at NBC News and MSNBC, and was awarded the Religion News Association’s excellence in magazine reporting in 2016.
Reflecting on her research, Schwartz stated, “While researching the 1929 massacre of Hebron’s Jewish community, I realized that this little-known chapter in history was ground zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict, key to understanding the widely overlooked forces that continue to inspire so much violence. My hope while writing Ghosts of a Holy War was that readers would gain a deeper understanding of the hidden roots of this conflict and see that peace will only be possible when these forces are addressed. I look forward to seeing this adaptation bring this much-needed historical understanding to a wider audience, so that history might stop repeating itself.”
Crystal City Entertainment’s previous projects include noteworthy films such as Everything Must Go, The Ides of March, and Lee Daniels’ The Butler. The company has also acquired the film and television rights to the Chia Pet figurine brand and is currently adapting Lisa Jewell’s bestseller, Then She Was Gone.
Yardena Schwartz is represented by UTA.
