Joan Hyler's Arduous Road to Recovery After a Horrific Accident

At dusk on Friday night, Aug. 15, 2008, Joan Hyler was crossing Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu when she was struck by a car traveling 60 miles per hour. Her 5-foot frame was thrown 25 feet through the air before she landed on the hard pavement. It was after midnight on the East Coast when her sister, Nancy Berlin, a nonprofit consultant, got a call saying Hyler, a prominent Hollywood manager, was in critical condition.

I recently signed a letter protesting the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to showcase and celebrate Tel Aviv. This in the very year when Gaza happened. The decision made the festival a participant in the newly launched campaign to "rebrand" Israel. Arye Mekel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Director General for Cultural Affairs, has said that artists and writers must be enlisted in order to "show Israel's prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war." The protesters felt it was wrong for the much-respected festival to be used in this manner. The role of art, after all, is not to prettify but to expose reality with all its contradictions and complexities.