The Reel Review
Survivors of 2023’s October 7th Hamas terrorist massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel share firsthand accounts and personal cell phone videos of that attack. This gripping documentary on Paramount+ looks at the festival, one of several targets which made up almost a third of the 1200 people Hamas would kill on that day, while kidnapping another 250.
Director Yariv Mozer does an outstanding job – first capturing the joyous, psychedelic drug-infused mood at the music festival, ravers mistaking the sight of missiles launched by Hamas from Gaza and distant sounds of semi-automatic gunfire as a festival fireworks show, then abject horror as Hamas terrorists surround them and start shooting, in what later was learned was a massive, coordinated attack. The inclusion of body cam footage from Hamas terrorists juxtaposed with the the opposing perspective of festival goers’ videos at specific key moments is chilling.
As expected, the personal cell phone footage, particularly that from inside one of the bunkers that Hamas attacked with grenades, is graphic and disturbing, but tastefully handled and humanized by the harrowing stories from survivors and their sorrow over friends who were killed in front of them. The film’s frenetic pacing matches the chaotic tragedy and it does not shy away from showing the carnage. This haunting tear-inducing documentary will stick with you long after you see it.
REEL FACTS
• We Will Dance Again filmmaker Yariv Mozer won an Israeli Film Academy Award for 2016’s Ben Gurion, Epilogue, a documentary about Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion.
• The film’s producer, former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky, says there are different versions of the film: a British version that will air on the BBC, an Israeli version and the Paramount+ version. Germany’s RTL will also air the film in full with no commercials – the first film to do so on the network since Schindler’s List.
• 101 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, 97 taken by Hamas on October 7th, four others taken beforehand.
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