Our Loves, a new film by Avi Nesher

Our Loves is a film about October 7^th, 2023, which focuses on love and resilience. Although it is a bit sentimental, the film is hard-hitting, emotional and meaningful. I viewed the film at the opening event of the Haifa Film Festival, which is held every year during Succot for the past 42 years and I am thankful to the people at the Gesher Film Fund for providing my husband and myself with invitations to this event. This year, the event gave homage to Avi Nesher as he was presented with a life achievement award. 

Avi Nesher is well-known for many films made during his long career – Image of Victory, Past Lives, Secrets, Turn Left at the End of the World. During his early years, in the 1970s, he made two films about young people in Israel – Sing Your Heart Out or The Troupe (הלהקה) and Dizengoff 99. As part of the homage to him at the film festival, there was a full orchestra and a group of singers, including Sassi Keshet (who was one of the stars in Sing Your Heart Out) who sang a medley of songs from these two early films.  The audience loved it!

When called upon to speak, Avi Nesher remembered when he was in his 20s and he directed these first two films. He recalled how shy he had been on the set, and when he called for “action”, Gidi Gov yelled, “what did you say?” just to taunt him! 

The new film, Our Loves, opened at the Toronto Film Festival, just two weeks earlier.  Nesher related that due to Canadian anti-Israeli sentiment, the Toronto Film Festival takes almost no Israeli films any longer.  But he was lucky that his film was chosen to be screened as part of this prestigious festival. The screening was set for Rosh Hashanah, so there weren’t any Jews from the Toronto community there.  But the 500 plus people in the audience loved the film and gave him a standing ovation!

At the Haifa Film Festival screening, the master of ceremonies of the evening was the famous Israeli actor, Lior Ashkenazi, which seemed so appropriate for the opening of a major film about October 7^th, because Ashkenazi had been the master of ceremonies for so many of those Saturday night protests in Hostage Square since October 7^th.

The film is made up of a series of stories about families and couples, and it is quite beautiful to see how the stories come together at the end.  Liri’s father, Shabi, has left her mother and she is very resentful.  Shabi’s story and his heroism become the central link tying everyone together in the story.  Sapir is a young religious woman who attended the Nova with a girlfriend.  There is Sandy, the Ashkenazi woman, and her Moroccan girlfriend, Milly, who is a cop on the Ofakim police force. Alfasi is considering leaving Israel to work for his uncle abroad.  There are four young army recruits, providing a bit of comic relief.  Rita lives on a border kibbutz in the Gaza envelope. Her son, Matan, is Liri’s boyfriend.

The review in the Hollywood Reporter criticized the film for being told only from the Israeli perspective.  This is true -- the film portrays the human stories behind this immense Israeli tragedy.  In a completely different style, Nesher’s earlier film, Image of Victory, was told both from the Israeli and Egyptian perspective of the 1948 war.  But in this film, that is clearly not intended. In fact, we don’t really see the human faces of the terrorists who came to perpetrate such terrible murder and destruction.  They are seen here only as dehumanized masked men.  

In the dialogue, once or twice, the film refers to the army’s lack of preparedness on the border, criticizing the government at that time, which is still the same irresponsible government today, three years later.  But this is not the focus of the film.  Rather, this is a film about Israelis who were unwittingly caught up in the events of October 7^th.  It tells their stories -- authentic stories about love, hope, heroism, and trauma.  The subject matter is extremely compelling and hard-hitting.  Highly recommended!