HBO’s The Survivor will be shown at the White House on Thursday, marking President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s first official screening since taking office.
The event, to take place in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, will be closed to the press, but the White House said that the movie’s director, Barry Levinson, will attend, along with producers and its lead actor, Ben Foster, as well as representatives of the American Jewish community. The movie tells the Holocaust story of Harry Haft, who after being sent to Auschwitz is forced to fight fellow prisoners in the camp. He survived, and later pursued a professional boxing career.
The White House event is taking place in honor of Yom HaShoah and Holocaust Remembrance Week.
While the First Family screens movies in a White House theater, located in the East Wing of the White House, Biden is following a tradition of hosting cast and crew as part of special events, typically tied to a topical subject. Barack and Michelle Obama hosted screenings of the HBO miniseries The Pacific and To Kill a Mockingbird, among other titles. George W. Bish hosted a screening of United 93 with families of victims of the Sept. 11 flight. Many in the entertainment community shunned Donald Trump, and his White House hosted fewer official screenings. Among his first was Finding Dory, although the Press Secretary Sean Spicer tweeted at the time that he welcomed guests and then went back to work.
