A decade before the rise of U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Israel had its own “Iron Lady,” Golda Meir, a 75-year-old grandmother more famous for her chicken soup recipes than wielding weaponry yet who led the country through its biggest military challenge 50 years ago when Egyptian and Syrian forces invaded during the Yom Kippur holiday. And her life is now told on screen in Guy Nattiv’s new film Golda.

Helen Mirren stars as Meir, and Liev Schreiber portrays Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state often, but not always, at odds with the Israeli prime minister. This is by a wide margin the best portrayal of the Israeli premier put to film, easily surpassing Ingrid Bergman’s 1982 movie A Woman Called Golda, among others. The film is dark and somber. The cinematography is beautiful and bleak. The overall gritty feel is aided by sparse dialogue and a fitting score. And the mood is tense. This is a story of survival told from the perspective of a survivor who, while the Holocaust loomed, famously said, “There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.”