Israeli filmmakers spotlight stories of Oct. 7 survivors, Israel-Hamas war

Following the October 7 massacre and the outbreak of war, Israelis have heard true stories of tragedy, evil, heroism, and triumph almost too intense to be believed, and filmmakers are grappling over how to portray them on screen. 

While it took decades for high-profile movies to be made about the Yom Kippur War and other Israeli conflicts, today’s filmmakers are working at breakneck speed to make movies about the current war. The fact that this is arguably the most documented one in human history fuels the urgency, since so many stories and images from the war are immediately accessible. 

In the past, a handful of war correspondents would make it to the frontlines once a war got underway, and the first fateful hours or days of the war were usually lost to history, save for a few photos. But as we know all too well, the Hamas terrorists (and Gazans who accompanied them) filmed the murders, abductions, and other crimes they committed and immediately broadcast them on social media, and many victims also left video and audio recordings to document their ordeals (and often their murders), that some of their families have shared. 

Several documentaries have already been released, and We Will Dance Again, a film by Yariv Mozer about the massacre at the Nova Music Festival, will open the Docu. Text Festival at the National Library of Israel on August 18 and will later be shown on Hot, and abroad. 

Broadcast journalists have made many in-depth reports on the war, some of which, like Ben Shani’s extraordinary documentary, Table for Eight (aka Abigail), about released hostage Abigail Mor Idan and her family, which was a segment on the Israeli newsmagazine show, Uvda (Fact), works so well as a standalone film that it has been screened at film festivals abroad. 

ALL THE DIRECTORS who spoke about this topic agreed that making a movie about the war and massacre was not a decision to be taken lightly. One director, who preferred not to give his name, said, “You don’t want to offend the survivors. In a drama, you might show the victims with flaws and problems, which is normal for a dramatic film, but in this case, you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” 

Others worried that in the course of their research, they would interview survivors and fill them with hope that their stories would be told, only to disappoint them later if the film did not receive funding, which many films don’t.

“So many projects go into development and then don’t get made,” said an experienced screenwriter. “Normally, you just say, ‘That’s the way it goes.’ But with these people and this subject, you don’t want to let anyone down. But you might.” 

Films on the war

Two filmmakers have already completed movies about the war. One is Dani Rosenberg’s Of Dogs and Men, the lightly fictionalized story of a girl looking for her dog on Kibbutz Nir Oz after the massacre, which will have its world premiere at the upcoming Venice International Film Festival. 

Rosenberg’s previous film, The Vanishing Soldier, which has not yet been released, has had a curious history. Made before the war started, it won the award for Best Israeli Feature Film at the Haifa International Film Festival on October 4. It tells the story of a young soldier (Ido Tako), fighting in a war in Gaza who deserts his unit impulsively and flees to Tel Aviv, where he hides out, and his officers assume he has been taken hostage. 

The opening (filmed in Zikim) where he leaves Gaza looks as if it could be taken from the news, but it’s far from clear how open audiences would be right now to the rest of the film, where he allows the country to worry that he is held by Hamas as he hangs out on the beach and with a girlfriend. The film, which has been well received abroad as an anti-war movie, does not currently have an Israeli release date.

VETERAN DIRECTOR Haim Bouzaglo started working on his now completed movie Red Flower, just weeks after October 7. “My cameraman and I had a feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we just couldn’t sit at home; we had to go out and start filming,” he said. 

He had previously made a film, Roses Gate, about an older couple, played by Albert Ilouz and Annette Cohen, living across from the police station in Sderot (which was overrun by terrorists on October 7 and where many people were killed) and he decided to go back with his cameraman and the actors and film a new story. 

He describes it as a kind of docu-drama, which shows 25 hours during which they can’t leave their home, while they watch the events at the police station and wait for word about their son, who is at the Nova Music Festival, and their niece, a border policewoman in the South. The events of the war intertwine with their personal drama. 

Among the directors with projects in development is one of Israel’s leading filmmakers, Ari Folman, who was nominated for an Oscar for the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir. In his new movie, The Thousand Yard Stare, he will reportedly return to his live-action roots after he made several animated films, Where is Anne Frank being the most recent. 

The Thousand Yard Stare tells the story of Shai, a 72-year-old retired IDF courier pilot, who sets out on the morning of October 7 to rescue his daughter from a kibbutz near the Gaza border. This terrifying experience brings back his suppressed memories from the Yom Kippur War, when as a young soldier, he failed to rescue his older brother. The film will focus on his hope that if he succeeds on October 7, he will heal his old wounds. 

Another one of Israel’s most acclaimed directors, Talya Lavie, who made the beloved film Zero Motivation, which was about bored female soldiers on a base in the Negev, is turning to the events of October 7 for her new film, Seven Eyes. Ironically, it’s also about female soldiers in the South, but this time she will tell the tragic story of the heroism of the female border observer soldiers at the Nahal Oz outpost, 15 of whom were killed on October 7 and seven of whom were taken hostage (one was murdered in captivity, one was rescued, and five are still being held). Noa Aharoni’s powerful documentary for Kan 11, Eyes Wide Open, looked at this story from the point of view of the families of those kidnapped and killed, who have to live with the fact that the army didn’t take their daughters’ warnings seriously.

AYELET MENAHEMI and Eleanor Sela previously collaborated on Seven Blessings, the winner of last year’s Ophir Award, which Menahemi directed with Sela co-writing the script and acting in it. Now they are focusing on a screenplay about the all-female tank crews that fought terrorists near Kibbutz Sufa and Kibbutz Holit on October 7. 

One of the more triumphant stories of the war, these female IDF fighters made history while saving lives. Sela and Menahemi, who announced this project in December, were reluctant to talk about it in detail, but said they were hard at work on researching and developing the screenplay. Sela said that it was an exciting project to be working on and that it was possible that some of the soldiers would take part in the film. 

Yes already has an anthology series about October 7 in development, which will feature stories about Hatzalah volunteers who headed to the South as quickly as they could and saved lives with their ambulance; a woman whose husband was killed when he jumped on a grenade to save her and their children; two best friends who hid out at the Nova Festival and survived; and a cyclist from Kibbutz Be’eri who was rescued by a Bedouin. 

Among the Israeli actors who will take part are Naomi Levov, Yuval Semo, Swell Ariel Or, and Noa Keidar. The creators include Chaya Amor, Oded Davidoff, and Daniel Finkelman.

Some directors voiced concerns that movies about the war might fall victim to the reforms proposed by Culture and Sport Minister Miki Zohar, who wants to change the criteria for giving government funding for films to favor movies likely to be commercially successful, such as comedies like Saving Shuli. Said one director, “A lot of Israelis will find these movies [about the war] too upsetting, but they should get made. The question is whether the government will support them and how much.”