There is a saying that journalists write the first draft of history, but that is equally true of documentary filmmakers. On that note, a number of films about the October 7 massacre by Hamas and the war that followed it are being shown at the 26th edition of Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival (docaviv.co.il), which is running until June 1 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, and other venues around the city.
These films vary in style and content. Some filmmakers began to tell stories about the aftermath of the massacre in the days immediately following the attack, with great urgency, while others have tried to relay what was happening from a more leisurely and cinematic point of view. However, despite their different approaches, these films all attempt to answer how we can move on from October 7 and honor the victims and survivors.
Jasmine Kainy’s Beyond October 7 focuses on one extended family from Kibbutz Be’eri, the Gads, who all managed to survive, and it shows how they have been coping in the days and months following the massacre. The older generation of the family, Aliza and Tzahi, are shown at first in a kind of suspended animation, sitting in a relative’s house in Haifa on October 10 and trying to figure out who among their friends is still alive. “I see my wife is broken, she can’t absorb the evil,” Tzahi says.
In early October, Ben Gad describes the torment of not knowing who among his friends is dead or alive. He then learns that one of them hid his children and was then kidnapped to Gaza.
The director asks, “What do you do now?” and he replies, “What do I do? Now I go home, you know, I make my father a cup of tea, I turn on some soccer on the TV or something. That’s what I do now. What is there to do?”Later, he learns that this friend, Yonatan “Yoni” Rapaport, was killed, and he breaks down.
Their daughter, Miri, has relocated with her family to a hotel on the Dead Sea. Miri is coping with a son who broke his leg when jumping out the window of their burning house to safety, and a daughter whose best friend, Emily Hand, was first pronounced dead and then listed as kidnapped and eventually released. As Miri attempts to comfort both her children – her daughter, understandably, is on an emotional roller coaster and doesn’t know how to react when she learns her friend is held captive by Hamas – she also tries to organize the kibbutz’s efforts to get its story out to the media. Most of the members don’t want to talk, either out of modesty or an inability to relive their trauma. So, in an almost mechanical voice, she tells her story dozens of times a day to foreign journalists. It is difficult for her, but she feels she has no choice:
“We have to keep what happened to Be’eri on everyone’s minds.”
One revealing and touching moment shows her walking to a demonstration to demand the release of the hostages while conducting an interview with a journalist in English and telling her daughter, in Hebrew, “I don’t have anything to eat.”“She’s hungry,” Miri explains to the reporter before going right back to answering questions.
As the months pass, they continue to struggle with their uncertain future, although remarkably early in the process, Tzahi and other Be’eri members manage to reopen the printing plant there. While he returns to the kibbutz every day to work at the plant, which is busy filling orders that are shipped all over the country, he dreams of returning there to live someday. At one point, asked what would be a “picture of victory,” he says, “We didn’t win; we lost.”
Exploring different aspects of life after October 7
SEVERAL SHORT films examine different aspects of life after October 7. Tattooed4Life by Kineret Hay-Gillor looks at tattoo artist Liraz Uliel, a survivor of the Supernova festival massacre, where 364 civilians were murdered. To cope with the grief and loss, she creates a fractal design that represents the lives of the victims and invites others affected by the tragedy to have these fragments of a larger design tattooed on their skin. Other survivors share their stories with her, and she gradually reveals her own.
Benny Shklovsky’s Voiceless Witness tells the story of Nikolay, a young man suffering from PTSD before October 7 who feels guilty for not being about to fight in the war and help protect his friends and family. Confused and adrift, he finds purpose in his life by adopting a stray dog that IDF soldiers found in Gaza. Not sure at first if he can commit to Khani – the soldiers named her that because they found her in Khan Yunis – he gradually bonds with her as he takes her around Tel Aviv and mediates a war at home between her and his cats. While this story may sound only tangentially related to the war, it presents an affecting portrait of someone trying to figure out a way to move on, which is something to which many of us will be able to relate.
Yoav Biran’s Deep in the Fog focuses on the uncertainty along the borders and tells three stories depicting the high tensions in the region that lead to bizarre situations during a war with no end in sight.
Yakie Ayalon’s Ye’arim follows survivors of Kibbutzim Netiv Ha’Asara and Zikim as they try to adjust to life at the Ye’arim Hotel in the Jerusalem Hills. It tells very human stories about coping without the freedoms that we often take for granted until they are gone, like the ability to go to the fridge and grab a late-night snack. In one touching moment, a volunteer art therapist talks about opening a room for children to draw and paint just a few days after the massacre, and the first boy who came in made a house. Others followed, and soon they had built a model community with a pool and an amusement park.