Ron Leshem

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Ron Leshem
רון לשם
Ron Leshem, by Eldad Refaeli at the 2006 Sapir Prize
Born	(1976-12-20) December 20, 1976 (age 47) 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 and producer, known for co-creating and co-writing the Israeli TV series Euphoria and for co-writing the Israeli war film Beaufort, based on his novel of the same name. He co-created and wrote for the television series No Man's Land (Hulu), Valley of Tears, The Gordin Cell, and the film Incitement. In addition to his career as a television executive, he was an executive producer of the American adaptation of Euphoria, which premiered on HBO in 2020.

Leshem was born December 20, 1976, in Tel Aviv, Israel, to a Jewish family. As a child, Leshem spent his summers on his family's Kibbutz and described it as a Left-Wing community that "had always placed itself on the forefront of the fight" for Palestinian rights and independence from the Israeli occupation.^[1]

Leshem served as 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, later on promoted as head of the news division at Yediot Ahronot upon writing as an analyst for military affairs. At the age of 26, he started serving as deputy chief editor for Ma'ariv, one of the three major newspapers in Israel, becoming the youngest deputy editor in the paper's history.^[2][3]

Additionally, he wrote short stories for Le Monde newspaper in France and columns in several European newspapers.^[4]

Leshem has been invited as a speaker to Harvard University, Yale University, Boston University and Berkeley University.

In 2005, Leshem left print media and began working in television.^[2] From 2006 until 2009, Leshem was 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,^[5] and Homeland, an American adaptation of his show Prisoners of War.^[5]

As a novelist, he won the prestigious annual literary award known as the Sapir Prize for Literature in 2006^[6] for his debut novel Beaufort,^[7][8] which was published in 2006 in Hebrew.^[8] The story is written as the diary of a young army officer, when IDF soldiers were protecting Beaufort Castle in Southern Lebanon.^[8] Beaufort was on the Israel bestseller list for 2 years,^{[citation needed]} distributed in 22 countries,^[9] translated into more than 20 languages^{[citation needed]} and sold 120,000 copies in Israel. The film version of Beaufort,^[9] which Leshem co-wrote,^[10] was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film^[11] and won the Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear for Best Director.^[12]

Leshem's second book, The Underground Bazaar, also reached the bestseller list and was translated into numerous languages.^{[citation needed]}

Leshem created and co-wrote the drama series The Gordin Cell,^[10] which received 11 nominations for the Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards in 2011. The TV series was adapted by NBC as Allegiance.^[5] In 2014, he was commissioned to develop the script for Crater Lake.^[13]

Furthermore, Leshem co-created and co-wrote the series Euphoria^[10] for Hot (2012). In 2018, he joined the American production of Euphoria as an executive producer.^[14] It was released on HBO.^[10]

He and Amit Cohen struck a long-term development deal with Red Arrow Studios International in 2018, preparing to create a new scripted drama label.^[15]

The Israeli film Incitement (dir. Yaron Zilberman), which Leshem co-wrote, premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. The film received 10 nominations for the Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards. He served as a story editor for the series Beauty and the Baker. Alongside his long-time writing partner, Amit Cohen, Leshem co-wrote and co-created the Syrian Civil War drama No Man's Land, an American-French co-production, which Hulu and Arte ordered straight to series in spring 2019.^{[citation needed]}

In the summer of 2019, production began on Israel's Valley of Tears,^{[citation needed]} 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.^[16] It was picked up by HBO in 2020^[17] and released as the "biggest-budget TV drama series" in Israel.^[18]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[10] Leshem, Cohen, and Xabi Molia wrote the eight episodes of Fertile Crescent.^[19] In November 2020, he was again partnering with WestEnd Films and Cohen on a new TV thriller, along with the company Anton.^[20]

Leshem lives between Boston and Los Angeles.^[21]

• 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.