On Friday, Quentin Tarantino paid a visit to an Israeli military base in the southern region of the country, meeting with residents and troops from the Israel Defense Forces in an effort to boost morale amid the ongoing war with Hamas.
A photo was posted on Twitter by the Israel War Room account, showing Tarantino posing with a group of Israelis in front of a military helicopter. “Legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino visits an Israeli base in southern Israel to boost IDF morale,” the caption reads.
Additionally, photos and a TikTok video surfaced of an Israeli man approaching Tarantino for a photo, which the Pulp Fiction director granted with a smile. Check out the video below.
While a visit to Israel is a far trek for some — like Bruno Mars, who evacuated the country following Hamas’ surprise attack last week — for Tarantino, it’s home. In the late 2010s, he began partially residing in Tel Aviv with his wife, the Israeli actor and musician Daniella Pick. The two married in 2018, and welcomed their son, Leo, in early 2020. When the pandemic hit just weeks after Leo was born, they hunkered down and spent the better part of a year in Israel.
Tarantino has previously expressed gratitude towards Israelis for welcoming him and praised Tel Aviv’s amenities. “I love the country, and the people are really nice, very nice to me, and they seem excited that I’m here,” he told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot in 2020. In 2021, he explained to Bill Maher that Tel Aviv is similar to a smaller version of Los Angeles, with “magnificent restaurants, cool bars, cool clubs.”
Yet, Tarantino has not been entirely free of the troubles faced by those who live in the region. In the same 2021 interview with Maher, he recalled the experience of having to take cover during attacks. “There was a city-wide siren going on and that’s letting you know that the Hamas missiles are on their way,” he said. “And then I take my 15-month-old son and my wife and we go down into a bomb shelter.”
In other Tarantino news, this past May, he revealed that his alleged final film, The Movie Critic, will tell the story of a reviewer who wrote for a porno magazine in the ‘70s. Inspired by a real-life critic Tarantino read in his teenage years, the film will star “a new leading man” in the “35-year-old ballpark.” No release date has been revealed at this time.
#BREAKING: Legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino visits an Israeli base in southern Israel to boost IDF morale pic.twitter.com/Vso6IgQlWa
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 13, 2023
@melachim_alefbet אני מרגיש שיש גליץ׳ במערכת
