I was very badly affected by the latest news. Yesterday was the day that Shirel Golan committed suicide on her 22nd birthday. She was a survivor of the Nova festival and she had been suffering from post trauma. Even though I had been putting off watching the film about the Nova festival, I decided that this was the time to pay proper honor to those who died there and those who survived.
We
Will Dance Again,
directed by Yariv Mozer, is a highly effective and emotional documentary film
which describes the trance festival that took place on Simchat Torah, Friday
night, October 6th, 2023. It portrays an event which was full of
energy and full of life. The festival
was produced by a company from Brazil and the DJs came from all over the world.
More than 3,500 young people attended in the fields outside of Kibbutz Re’im. The next morning, October 7th, about
400 of them were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.
Some of them
were artists, some were models ,others were university students, song writers,
production staff. All of them were wonderful young adults who enjoyed dancing,
loved to be together and celebrate life!
As the sun rose on the morning of October 7th, they were hit
by an attack of extreme evil, and their lives changed forever. There were rockets everywhere, explosions,
sirens, screaming, barrages of rockets, people running, nobody knowing what was
happening. The footage is comprised entirely
of cellphone footage and Hamas body cams and even Hamas propaganda
footage. We watch as the bulldozers
broke through the border fence in 60 different locations.
The young
people tell stories of how they hid in the portable toilets, in refrigerated
equipment, in garbage containers. They
were fleeing through the fields, watching their friends being slaughtered
around them, bullets whizzing by, hiding in roadside shelters.
The stories
are so emotional. In one roadside
shelter, a local Bedouin goes out to talk to the terrorists and he is murdered
right away. Hersh Goldberg-Polin is in
there with his friend Aner Shapiro. The
terrorists throw in a grenade and Aner picks it up and throws it back. This happens a few times, until finally a
grenade explodes inside. Hersh loses his hand and Aner is killed. We all know
the story of Hersh, who is kidnapped and later executed by the Hamas in one of
their underground tunnels.
The
survivors offer their testimonies against the up-close footage from cellphones
of friends being slaughtered around them.
The survivors wonder what was happening to their families, thinking that
perhaps the entire country was under siege, watching as their friends were
kidnapped. Hours go by and the police
and the army don’t come. There are burnt
out cars and the piles of bodies are mounting up.
This is the
story of close to 400 murdered, 44 kidnapped, hundreds wounded, and hundreds
living with PTSD. This film provides the victims with individual names. We hear the story of Shani Louk who was
kidnapped and later murdered. Eliyah
Cohen who was taken hostage. Ron
Weinberg who was a tech genius and was killed.
And so many more – David Yair Shalom Newman, Gili, Shaked, Avraham,
Uria, Forti, Ruth Peretz and her father Erick, Keshet, Sivan, Maayan, and so
many more…
We
Will Dance Again
(90 minutes, documentary) is an extremely hard-hitting documentary film, which
tells a story that needs to be told – a tale of those who were murdered, those
who were taken hostage, and those who survived -- not a film for the
light-hearted. The film is available
from Go2Films.
No comments:
Post a Comment