00:00Bonjour, je m'appelle Tova Feltu, et c'est February 25, 2026, et je suis à l'église Temple Emmanuel.
00:09Aujourd'hui, Monsieur David Serrero, de France, a fait un documentaire de mon travail sur scène et de mon vie
00:18sur scène, et il s'appelle ce documentaire, Tova.
00:23Comment allez-vous ? Je m'appelle David Serrero, le directeur et le producer du film Tova, que vous allez
00:28voir aujourd'hui, qui est en New York premiering, en fait, c'est la première première à la Stryker Center.
00:35Je suis très heureux de présenter ce film ici, parce que c'est le meilleur endroit dans New York City,
00:40vous savez, c'est le meilleur crédit de juifs ici, c'est ici, à la Stryker Center.
00:46Je suis très heureux. Nous vous aimez.
00:48Tova Feltu, she's part of American theater history.
00:53She is an American treasure, and she has completely changed the way we portray women on stage, but also now
01:02on television, with Nobody Wants This, and she has this 50-year-plus career.
01:07There's only a handful of women, you know, who have had that kind of career, and her career, you know,
01:13she portrayed all these Jewish characters,
01:15but she made them very mainstream, and that's why she's so unique, and it's really an honor for me, and
01:21a dream come true, to make a movie about this extraordinary woman.
01:31Somebody's saying push-ups.
01:34Yeah!
01:46Who is better? Who is better than you?
01:49No, no one.
01:50But for me, why am I so dressed up? I always believe in overdressing for a semcha.
01:57So, I am overdressed, because for me, this is my Oscar night. This is my night. When David came to
02:04me, and he said, you know, I want to do it documentally about you.
02:07I swear to God, I looked over my shoulder, and I said, are you talking to me? And I'm so
02:13grateful for it.
02:15Let me narrow down who you were going to talk to.
02:18Well, you're absolutely right. Well, first of all, she, Tova mentioned that it's her Oscar night, so a lot of
02:26director, producers, they win, they hope one day to win an Oscar.
02:32I feel I succeeded in my life because I won a Tova. And that's, for me, the highest reward you
02:40can hope to have.
02:41But I would tell you that you cannot, I kind of became the new king of biopics, and it became
02:49my new thing, you know.
02:50But because I understood that people are the result of an equation, you know. You know, so you have to
02:57show all the steps of the equation to understand who Tova is, you know.
03:03Would Tova would have been another performer without doing Golda? You know, I think Golda brought her something that makes
03:12her different.
03:13Shakespeare, also, at a time when, you know, she also break barricades, because it was also a time when you
03:19were Jewish, you know, people won't take you so seriously doing Shakespeare.
03:23But she broke, she broke all these frontiers.
03:28What was your question?
03:30St. Marty, we forget.
03:32I was just asking about narrowing down.
03:34And he's in the back, always, St. Marty, in the back.
03:37One more.
03:38I was asking you about narrowing down all the...
03:41Yeah, but that's a good question.
03:43So, well, you know, I'm always interested to what I call the turning points in the story, because a documentary,
03:51you can fall very quickly into the YouTube or a TV segment.
03:57And my approach is we need to make a cinematographic approach.
04:01So I film, whether it's Tova or the other people, I film them as if I'm filming, quote, unquote, a
04:07real movie.
04:08And I try to remove the word documentary to really, I should say, design the story as if it's the
04:18plot of the film, you know.
04:20So that's really my approach, you know.
04:22And, of course, all the biggest names.
04:25Did you see all these names, all these casts?
04:27You know, these people, they don't really sign in for a documentary like that if you don't go through 10
04:34attorneys, 20 agents, 50 publicists.
04:37But when I call them and I say, this is for Tova, they say, oh, no, no, no, no.
04:41Tomorrow, when are you free?
04:43I come to you.
04:43You know, so this also shows who she is.
04:47Can I get a copy of the 15-page document that you gave Oscar Isaac?
04:54Congratulations to both of you on this film.
04:58David, I want to start with you and ask you, what was it?
05:02What was the thing?
05:03I feel like a director always has a question in their mind.
05:07What do I want to find out?
05:09When you thought about Tova and this incredible multi-decade career, this prodigious talent, what was the question in your
05:20mind?
05:21Well, first of all, thank you, Jessica, for being here because thank you for the opportunity, the questions.
05:27Well, did you guys enjoy the film, by the way?
05:31Thank you.
05:32Thank you so much.
05:33Thank you.
05:34Write the review.
05:35If you don't know what to write, you ask me.
05:37I send you the review.
05:38I send you the review to copy and pass me.
05:40No, no.
05:40No, no.
05:40But actually, you know, in your question was the answer because she is really one of the few ladies who
05:47has a career of over five decades on Broadway, you know, and also on television and films.
05:55But also what I admire in her is that she creates her own opportunities.
06:08And, you know, I always say that Tova is like a bakery store that is right at the corner over
06:16there that when you push that door, you feel home, you know.
06:21And every time I went to her house, she, you know, put so much food around, you know.
06:26And I told her one day, I told her, I have stomach pain.
06:30What do you have exactly?
06:31Okay.
06:32You go to the pharmacy, you ask for this and that, you know.
06:35So, she's not just part of the American theater history.
06:42She's part of America's history.
06:44And I'm telling you, me being French and living in the U.S. for 25 years now, is you guys
06:50have to be proud that this Jew, not only is American, but is part of our community who is Jewish,
06:59you know.
07:00And she takes all that Jewish literature, you know, all that, all these Jewish roles, and she brings them mainstream.
07:07You know, when you say, well, nobody wants this, it's incredible, and she's known for that, you know.
07:14Thank you.
07:17Tova, you disappear into your roles in such a beautiful way.
07:23And I love watching, and you hear your co-stars and producers and casting people say it in the film.
07:29And it's something you're so brilliant at, and you talk about it, like the curiosity that you need to play
07:37a character.
07:37But I'm curious for you, when it came to, I'm not putting a camera on you and you're playing a
07:45character.
07:45I'm putting a character on you for you to open up.
07:50What did that feel like for you?
07:53An obligation.
07:55I mean, an actor, if you really want to get into the art form, in my opinion, you know, this
08:01is my goal, does take what is good for you and discard what you don't need.
08:05But when you watch De Niro in Raging Bull, when you watch Streep in her early career, this ability to
08:12change our skin, to enter the neshama, the soul, that which is eternal, about another person.
08:18First of all, it's a metaphor for the world.
08:21It's an empathy that we are so desperate to have in this disparate world at this time.
08:27And what plagues me, I'm sorry, I'm not getting political, I'm just getting philosophical, I remember, not my parents, my
08:36father was a GI and in the intelligence, and I didn't even know we had relatives that died in the
08:40Holocaust until I went to Yad Vashem in 1982.
08:45But I heard the sentence, if you start with the Jews, it never ends with the Jews.
08:50And here we are with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexico, the Middle East, Iran wanting to go to war, Russia at war
08:59with Ukraine, and the United States Navy and Air Force moving into the Middle East.
09:04So,
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