2022 Primetime Emmy nominee executive producer, and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter for best international film, Ron Leshem is a renown writer, author, and producer, based in Boston. Leshem is known most recently for HBO's “Euphoria”, which is based on his original series in Israel. Leshem also co-created and co-wrote Hulu and Arte's Syrian Civil war drama “No Man’s Land”, and HBO's war series “Valley of Tears”.  Valley of Tears (She'at Ne'ila in Hebrew) tells the incredible story of Israel's Yom Kippur war in 1973, when Israel was nearly annihilated. The show received accolades for its innovation in recreating battle scenes, and holds the record for highest budget for any TV show produced in Israel to date. 

 

Leshem started as a bestselling author, and his books have been published in 20 languages. He won Israel's top literary award, The Sapir Prize, for his novel Beaufort. He co-wrote the book Beaufort into a film which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He is the author of two other novels, Under a Secret Moon and What the Ocean Remembers.  Leshem's other film “Incitement” won Israel's Academy Awards for best film in 2019.  In Television, his work as creator and writer also includes the drama “The Gordin Cell”, adapted by NBC as ״Allegiance״. He served as a script editor for the dramedy “The Baker and The Beauty”, adapted by ABC.

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As a TV executive, head of content and drama for Keshet TV, Leshem picked up and oversaw the development of “Prisoners of War” (The original of “Homeland”), “The A-Word”, “Traffic Light”, “Arab Labor”, and many other critically acclaimed international shows.

He started his media career as a war correspondent and a news editor, then served as deputy editor-in-chief of the second-largest circulated daily newspaper in Israel at the time.

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Watch Valley of Tears Trailer

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Watch No Man's Land Trailer

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About Incitement
The film Incitement is about the 1995 assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin by Yigal Amir. The film, told from the point of view of the killer, portrays what Amir saw and heard in the two years leading to the tragic day in 1995. 

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About Under a Secret Moon

Bestselling author Ron Leshem turns current global events into a sweeping, heartbreaking love story between a student and an underground race car driver caught in the turmoil of post-revolution Tehran.

Kami Suheil, an inquisitive, emphatic young man, arrives in bustling Tehran in search of a brighter future. In a city where time seems to halt under the strict laws of the Islamic Republic, Kami falls in love with the famous race car driver Niloofar Khalidian. With her brazen, daredevil attitude both on and off the tracks, Niloofar introduces Kami to the city’s small pockets of liberty: underground car racing, forbidden black market bazaars, and euphoric celebrations of freedom under the oppressive veil of the regime.

Alongside Niloofar, Kami befriends the colorful, reclusive tenants of the apartment complex owned by his aunt: an elderly, disgraced judge still clinging to her former glory, a shy and quiet gay man leading a dangerous double life, and Kami’s own aunt Zhara – an actress whose life and career stopped when the Revolution began.
Torn between the forbidden and the permitted, the idealistic and the rational, Kami’s turbulent life comes to an intersection of fateful decisions. Under the secret moon, Kami will decide whether he and everyone he knows will pay the ultimate price for freedom.

Bold, imaginative, and enchantingly written, Under a Secret Moon is a coming-of-age story of identity. Rife with the multifaceted contradictions of modern-day Iran, Ron Leshem presents a unique love story that examines contemporary choices, the privilege of rebellion, and the struggle behind reluctant obedience.

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