Ron Leshem

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Ron Leshem
רון לשם
Leshem at the 2006 Sapir Prize
Born	(1976-12-20) December 20, 1976 (age 48) Tel-Aviv, Israel
Nationality	Israeli American
Occupations	Television producer film director screenwriter author
Years active	1998–present

Ron Leshem (Hebrew: רון לשם; born December 20, 1976) is an Israeli American television writer, producer, and author.

He co-created and co-wrote the Israeli television series Euphoria and the film Beaufort, which was based on his novel of the same name^[1]. He was an executive producer of the American adaptation of Euphoria, which premiered on HBO in 2020.

His other work includes the television series No Man's Land, Valley of Tears, and The Gordin Cell, and the film Incitement.

Leshem was born on December 20, 1976, in Tel Aviv, Israel, into a Jewish family. During his childhood, Leshem spent his summers at his family's Kibbutz, which he characterized as left-wing community that had consistently positioned itself at the forefront of the struggle for Palestinian rights and independence from Israeli occupation.^[2]

Leshem was a soldier in the Intelligence Corps of the Israel Defense Forces. Subsequently, he spent three years as an Israeli reporter from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and was later promoted to the head of the news division at Yediot Ahronot upon writing as an analyst for military affairs. At the age of 26, he became Deputy Chief Editor for Ma'ariv, one of the three major newspapers in Israel, and the youngest deputy editor in the paper's history.^[3][4]

Additionally, he wrote short stories for Le Monde newspaper in France and columns in several European newspapers.^[5]

In 2005, Leshem left print media and began working in television.^[3] From 2006 until 2009, he was the head of content and programming for Keshet Broadcasting. He oversaw development and production for Israeli TV series such as Arab Labor, the A-word, Traffic Light,^[6] and Homeland, an American adaptation of his show Prisoners of War.^[6]

As a novelist, Leshem won the Sapir Prize for Literature in 2006^[7] for his debut novel Beaufort,^[8][9] which was published in 2006 in Hebrew.^[9] The story is written as the diary of a young army officer, when IDF soldiers were protecting Beaufort Castle in Southern Lebanon.^[9] Beaufort was on the Israel bestseller list for two years,^[10] distributed in 22 countries,^[11] translated into more than 20 languages^[12] and sold 120,000 copies in Israel. The film version of Beaufort,^[11] which Leshem co-wrote,^[13] was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film^[14] and won the Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear for Best Director.^[15]

Leshem's second book, The Underground Bazaar, also reached the bestseller list.^[16]

Leshem created and co-wrote the drama series The Gordin Cell,^[13] which received 11 nominations for the Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards in 2011. The TV series was adapted by NBC as Allegiance.^[6] In 2014, he was commissioned to develop the script for Crater Lake.^[17]

Leshem co-created and co-wrote the series Euphoria^[13] for Hot (2012). In 2018, he joined the American production of Euphoria as an executive producer.^[18] It was released on HBO.^[13]

Leshem and Amit Cohen struck a long-term development deal with Red Arrow Studios International in 2018, preparing to create a new scripted drama label.^[19]

In the summer of 2019, production began on Israel's Valley of Tears,^[20] an 8-part mini-series set in the Yom Kippur War, which Leshem co-created with Cohen, Daniel Amsel, Yaron Zilberman, Gal Zaid, and Izhar Has-Lev.^[21][22] It was picked up by HBO in 2020^[23] and released as the "biggest-budget TV drama series" in Israel.^[24]

In 2019, Leshem published in Israel his novel When we were beautiful (Hebrew: יפים כמו שהיינו), and announced it will be translated to English by Jessica Cohen.^[25]

In 2019, he signed with Anonymous Content along with his frequent co-writer Amit Cohen, with whom he'd recently worked on the Hulu series Fertile Crescent, about the Syrian Civil War starring James Purefoy.^[13] Leshem, Cohen, and Xabi Molia wrote the eight episodes of Fertile Crescent.^[26] In November 2020, he again partnered with West End Films and Cohen on a new TV thriller, along with the company Anton.^[27]

Leshem lives in Boston and Los Angeles.^[28]

• Arab Labor (2007–2011)
• Ramzor (Traffic light) (2008–2013)
• Prisoners of War (2010–2012)
• The A-Word (2010–2014)
• Polishuk (2010)

• Ron Leshem bio note at Random House, Inc.
• Ron Leshem (in Hebrew)
• Leshem, Ron. "English excerpt from Beaufort". Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture.