Even before Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar’s proposed reforms to the film industry to steer it in a more populist direction, the nation’s cinema was already being reshaped by Oct. 7, 2023.
For many filmmakers and producers, it could no longer be business as usual. They set aside projects that had occupied them until Oct. 7 and shifted resources to tell the stories that had to be told now to show and heal Israel’s pain—and their own.
“Until the hostages came back and until the ceasefire—whatever that’s worth—there was no moving forward,” said Danna Stern, a former senior executive at YES television who now works as an independent producer based in Berlin. When Stern was approached by a German production company to co-produce Supernova, a documentary about the Nova music festival massacre, the project was more of a personal than a professional necessity.
“For me, it was very therapeutic,” she said in a video call with JNS. “I don’t know what I would’ve done for myself after a few months after Oct. 7. Everyone in Israel was in a state of shock and did what they could to help.”
Within weeks of the attacks, Israeli filmmakers picked up cameras and began documenting what had happened before, during and after Oct. 7. A wave of projects followed: Red Alert, One Day in October and We Will Dance Again first aired in Israel and were then picked up by streamers for wider distribution. The latest dramatization, 12 Hours in October, was released in theaters in January.
Between storytelling, documentation and activism
“It’s kind of an unprecedented time lapse between actual trauma/event and its narrative processes,” Lior Sasson, former managing director of the Israeli Film and TV Academy, told JNS at a café in Tel Aviv. “So I think the creative community reacted quite amazingly to this trauma.”
For Sasson, that immediacy mattered, especially amid denials of the atrocities and slanders against Israel by a vocal anti-Israel activist and artistic community.
Several documentaries and docudramas about the Hamas massacre were showcased at international film festivals, including Holding Liat, Of Dogs and Men, Letter to David and The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue. The first two, while showing the victims’ plight, were also critical of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
At the same time, distinctly Palestinian narratives are also being recognized. No Other Land, a Palestinian-Norwegian production, took last year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, while a Tunisian film about a Gaza girl killed by the IDF was recently nominated for the upcoming Oscar’s Best International Feature Film.
Israel’s Oscar submission, The Sea, which tells the story of a Palestinian boy aspiring to see the Mediterranean, didn’t make the shortlist. For small countries like Israel, film festivals are often the clearest path to international recognition, distribution and prestige.
“In general, I think films deal with conflict, and in conflict you will always root for the ‘underdog,’” Sasson said.
Even after the horrors of murder, rape and torture that Israelis experienced on and from Oct. 7, Israel is generally not viewed as the “underdog” in the global arthouse community.
“One day we’re victimized with medieval barbarity, and the next day we turned it around and redid the Middle East, which is amazing. That’s what winners do,” said composer Ariel Blumenthal, who worked on Red Alert.
Producer Tchelet Semel, who has worked on One Day in October, has noted that works dealing with Oct. 7 from a distinctly Israeli point of view generally found homes with distributors sympathetic to Israel, like David Ellison’s Paramount+, which picked up Red Alert and We Will Dance Again.
Paramount had publicly rejected a boycott of industry professionals targeting Israeli film institutions. Market considerations and potential activist backlash further contribute to hesitation among international distributors to co-produce or pick up Israel-themed films and television shows.
“Part of the shock of what we call Oct. 8 was that the industry was rushing to be the first to tell the story, and then we understood that no one is waiting to hear it,” Semel said.
The new cultural fault lines
Polls show that, since Oct. 7, a majority of Israelis have rejected the Oslo “land for peace” framework and the creation of a Palestinian state. Producer Ron MP Auerbach, who worked on We Will Dance Again, has noticed the country’s rightward shift on security issues, including in the arts community.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean shifting towards Bibi,” said Auerbach, referring to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He recalled how Waltz with Bashir, the 2008 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, was celebrated by Israeli cultural officials despite its critique of IDF actions during the 1982 Lebanon War; it showed Israel’s capacity to self-reflect.
“I’m not sure you can get a film like Waltz with Bashir made again now with public funds,” Auerbach said, “and I’m not sure how a filmmaker who makes that film would be treated when coming back to Israel now.”
Meanwhile, the Shomron Film Fund, which supports films portraying life in Judea and Samaria, is among the beneficiaries of the Culture Ministry’s reforms, which include increased funding to an array of Israeli film funds. In 2022, dozens of Israeli filmmakers publicly refused to work with the Shomron Film Fund, arguing that it “whitewashes the occupation.” Several prominent actors and filmmakers rejected this boycott, saying that the Fund was a welcome “new home for creation.” Has Oct. 7 altered the creative community’s attitudes toward this sector?
“It’s too early to judge,” the Fund’s director, Esther Alush, told JNS at the Dec. 30 Israeli Film Awards in Jerusalem. “There is still fear of people who are different—of ‘religious’ and ‘settlers’ in the film world. It’s not natural for them.” Still, she said, the fund is attracting a growing number of film professionals glad to work with it.
Characters over politics
Israel has become known as a global leader in scripted television, and Israeli series like Fauda and Tehran have become household names. As a mass medium directly reaching living rooms, television is driven primarily by audience interest and commercial considerations.
Sasson thinks the medium lends itself to comedies and dramas that are more politically nuanced than films showcased at festivals. A scripted series builds a world over time with relatable characters, no matter what their demographic.
“A film is driven by a story, while television is based on characters, and we fall in love with the characters and not the story,” he said. “The story is only the hook while the characters are the ones pulling us in.”
Given reforms to Israel’s public funding of Israeli cinema and mounting international isolation, Semel believes that private investment will play a growing role in bringing authentic Israeli stories to the big and little screen.
“This is a new, important and healthy thing that’s happening, and it is a true lifeline to this industry,” she said.
Blumenthal points to Christian-backed production companies that have dramatized biblical stories for the small screen, such as Amazon’s House of David, as examples of private investment translating into successful niche programming.
“They understand there is an audience, they bring private funds, and they do it,” Blumenthal said.
The artistic fallout from Oct. 7, Auerbach said, need not necessarily translate into movies and TV shows that deal directly with that fatal day.
“Oct. 7 was a decisive moment in Israeli history, and we’ll see where we go from here, but it definitely opened up discourse about what it means to be Jewish, Zionist and Israeli in this day and age.”
This is the second article in a series exploring the impact of Oct. 7 on the Israeli entertainment industry.
Part 1: The battle for Israel’s red carpet, post-Oct. 7
Part 3: As films take sides, Berlinale insists on apolitical posture
Part 4: In a taxi, the Berlinale’s ‘Where To?’ offers a roadmap for peace
