‘We Will Dance Again’ Director on Debates Around Oct. 7 Doc: “This Film Is a Never-Ending Story”
We Will Dance Again, a Paramount+ documentary about the Hamas militants’ mass killing and hostage-taking of music festival attendees in southern Israel — part of a larger attack that triggered the ongoing Gaza war — debuted Tuesday, just ahead of the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre. Director Yariv Mozer’s immersive approach elides commentary. Instead, he sticks to harrowing testimony from survivors, buttressed by graphically violent video taken in real time, including footage retrieved from the assailants. “It’s events happening in front of your eyes,” explains the film’s producer Susan Zirinsky, who’s the former head of CBS News. “There is no exaggeration, no embellishment.”
Mozer spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about why he doesn’t see the project as political, when real violence is too much for viewers, and how international buyers are taking different approaches to the film.
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What’s the genesis of the project?
On the 7th of October, I was sitting in my apartment in Tel Aviv. I thought, “What’s my responsibility, my duty, as a documentary filmmaker? Where should I be?” It took two days before I was able to get to the South, to witness [the Nova festival site] with my own eyes. It was truly like nothing I’d seen in my life. People were still looking for personal belongings. The smell was awful. It was the starting point.
How did it end up at Paramount+?
It began as a collaboration with the Israeli documentary channel, Hot8. Then MGM joined, through Fulwell 73. Then when Susan Zirinsky came aboard, Paramount+ signed on. [Zirinsky’s See It Now Studios is part of Paramount Global.]
Are you worried the documentary will be viewed through strictly polarized ideological lenses?
I am concerned. The film isn’t political. It’s told from the eyes of the survivors and from the eyes of Hamas. There is one truth about what happened.
Did any potential buyers have reservations about the film?
I was pitching this to several other U.S. streaming platforms and what I was told is that they’re afraid of touching this subject matter, the 7th of October, because of concerns about the political situation.
What’s happening with international distribution?
The film was sold to Australia, to Spain. Hot8 will show it in Israel.
It’s interesting. RTL in Germany decided to air it on primetime television, on a linear channel with commercial breaks, which I believe hasn’t been done since Schindler’s List.
Then, the BBC, the version they’ll air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists. It was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organization or not.
The narrative is filled with violent footage. How did you decide what to utilize, how much was enough, what would engage and what would overwhelm?
It was a constant discussion [among the creative team]. I was in favor of showing more. I wanted to keep as much as possible, to be able to show how enormous the scale of this attack was and the brutality of these atrocities against people who couldn’t defend themselves.
Others were on the side of what viewers would think, or what viewers could cope with. And that was a good thing, that input. It was a healthy process.
Is this also why there’s little mention of the Hamas militants’ sexual violence and sadism against festivalgoers?
We had a lot of discussions of what would happen to the film if you have testimony like this — audio-visual testimony of the sexual violence that happened. Would we lose audiences on streaming platforms? Eventually we thought it would be too much.
We show [festivalgoer] Shani Louk’s [dead] body on a Hamas truck in Gaza, and we see the way those people are treating it. I think that [footage], you can’t stop thinking of what she went through. Sometimes you let the viewer think by themselves on what those people had to go through. Sometimes you don’t speak to these things directly.
I was struck by the festivalgoers’ descriptions of hiding from the Hamas militants in portable restrooms, dumpsters, refrigeration units and under the festival stage. It was reminiscent of Jews hiding under floorboards from Nazis.
My family survived the Holocaust. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Holocaust. It’s why we decided to close the film by saying the 7th of October was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Your previous projects focused on Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion, a then-head of the nation’s military; and Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official who organized the Holocaust. Is We Will Dance Again in conversation with them?
I’m used to bringing viewers into history. This is a story that’s still in front of our eyes. I don’t know if it’s even history yet. I had to change the end of the film just a few weeks ago to update what happened to [Nova festivalgoer] Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was murdered after his time in captivity. This film is a never-ending story, unfortunately. The hostages haven’t been brought home and there’s not yet a ceasefire.
The documentary shows how the festivalgoer victims were mostly secular, progressive types — partying, doing drugs, experimenting with their identities — and their attackers were conservative religious fundamentalists.
That’s the reality. A brutal fundamentalistic movement is obsessively looking to destroy the values of Western society. These were young people at a music festival celebrating life and love and peace: very na?ve, very free-spirited. And they faced the most horrific people, who value death.
The Nova festival attack has been extensively covered by the news media. What do you hope viewers will take away from your documentary approach?
I want people to find themselves immersed. This is why the film is told in present time — so you feel exactly what it was like in each moment. There’s no interpretation. You’re there. That’s intentional.
Tell me about the interview process with these festivalgoers.
We had a psychologist on set to meet the survivors right after their interviews. They had a session because they were very concerned with retrieving the trauma.
For all of them, it was a necessity to come and tell their story for the sake of the loved ones who are not with them, in the memory of those who are gone and in the hope of the hostages coming back. For them, they are not in the aftermath but still coping and waiting for closure to this story. It’s continuing.
We Will Dance Again is now streaming on Paramount+.
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