Avi Nesher on Bringing an Israeli Film to TIFF: “You Don’t Boycott the Art”

Nesher’s Our Loves, which had its sold out world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday, is his fifth TIFF movie, following official selections for The Secrets (2007), The Matchmaker (2010), The Wonders (2013), and Past Life (2016).

One of the most significant figures in popular Israeli cinema of the last 20 years, Nesher says he prefers the Canadian festival — “which is about pure cinema” — to what he considers the “very strong political considerations” that go into the official selection in Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

Not that politics was entirely absent in Toronto. Ahead of the Our Loves premiere, there were calls to boycott the film because of the support it received the Israeli culture ministry. Since the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza, some activist groups have been calling for an all-out ban on Israeli cultural exports, including cinema.

TIFF last year was accused of bowing to boycott pressure when it briefly pulled Barry Avrich’s Oct. 7 documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue from official selection. The film was eventually reinstated after a public outcry.

Our Loves also looks at the events of Oct. 7, including the attacks at the Nova music festival and on the kibbutzim near the Gaza border. But Nesher frames the horror of the day from an unfamiliar angle. His dramedy weaves together intersecting stories of ordinary Israelis, all dealing with their own mundane personal crises. There’s Sapir (Daniel Gimpel), a young religious woman, dumped by her fiancé on Oct. 6. Shabi (Shalom Michaelshvili), a retired policeman, in the midst of a bitter divorce. Or Milly (Magi Azarzar), a policewoman hiding her pregnant fiancée, and her own sexuality, from her Moroccan mother.

In their struggle for survival on Oct. 7 all find new meaning in life.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in Toronto, Nesher discussed the “offensive boycott” of Israeli cinema, how real-life stories of Oct. 7 survivors inspired his new film and why humor is the best means of getting political messages across.

What’s it like to be representing Israel at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, despite some calling for a boycott of this film?

The whole idea of a boycott is really offensive, because it’s beyond simplistic. I grew up in New York City, and when I was a boy there were all those marches against the Vietnam War. They would march against LBJ — “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?” — that kind of thing. They marched against the government, they marched against the military, but nobody would boycott Hollywood movies. That would be outlandish. That would be ludicrous. Nobody would boycott Andy Warhol. Nobody would boycott American literature or American theater.

You don’t boycott the art if you are unhappy with the way a government conducts itself, and you do not confuse the people of a country with the way the government behaves — especially if the government is extremely unpopular. There’s an election in a few weeks [in Israel] and the government is doing really badly in the polls.

Artists usually have led whatever resistance there was, be it in Poland, in Hungary, and so in Israel. To hit the people who are fighting the good cause in order to get things to be better…to punish artists for the deeds of their government just brings up associations of anti-Semitism. I’m not sure it is [anti-Semitic] but it is ludicrous.

So I’m really happy to be here. The movie stands for human values. It doesn’t stand for political values. I’m not here to explain Israel’s position, because I do not share the government’s point of view at all. I’ll be one of those people who are not voting for this government.

I’m just overjoyed to be here, because I’ve always loved TIFF because TIFF had this big thing about pure cinema, whereas the European festivals always had very strong political considerations — they very often [only] show movies with the right politics.

TIFF, and other festivals, would say they are not boycotting Israeli films. Do you see an unofficial boycott?

I haven’t investigated that, and I’m very careful not to offer an opinion based on speculation. But I do know for a fact that many good Israeli movies that normally would be shown [at major festivals] did not get accepted. It cannot just be coincidence. For many years Israeli cinema was flourishing internationally. At any of those big four festivals [Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto] you would always have five, six Israeli movies. Now, very rarely do you get one, and often the one that pleases the political outlook of the European press.

As Oscar Wilde said, losing one parent is a tragedy, losing both parents looks like carelessness. If one or two [Israeli] movies don’t get in — okay. But a whole slew of movies, over two, three years? One raises an eyebrow.

It just saddens me, because it’s so ineffective. You do not boycott the people who are supposed to be part of the solution. You smash the hell out of the government. But the artist? You boycott the artist? It makes no sense.

Let’s actually talk about the film. It surprised me. I didn’t expect so much humor, given the subject matter. Why did you approach the events of Oct. 7 that way?

On Oct. 7 I was as horrified and shocked and offended and helpless as all Israelis. I didn’t see any reason to make a movie about Oct. 7, the military tragedy, the atrocity. That’s for historians to do, that’s for documentaries. I didn’t want to do it.

But I’d had a movie open just before, called The Monkey House. It was one of those rare art movies that had really great reviews and great box office. On the first week we were No. 1 on the reviews chart and No. 1 on the box office chart. But, small detail, we opened a week before Oct. 7. So the movie houses shut down, and that was the end of that.

No big deal; people had it a lot worse than we did. But a few weeks later I got calls from people in the kibbutzim that were burned down, who lost children and parents and experienced the worst. One of them said, ‘We couldn’t get tickets to The Monkey House during the first week, so we bought tickets ahead of time for Saturday night, Oct. 7, in a nearby town. My wife and I got up and thought cool, we get to see The Monkey House tonight just as the missiles began to fly overhead.’

He said: “That is the last time I remember myself as a human being. Now I’m this person whose house burned down, whose brother was killed, whose aunt was raped. I just want to remember myself as a human being. Bring The Monkey House to this hotel where they put us up, with refugees who survived the attack.“ I said, “I’ll do anything for you: I’ll do your laundry, I’ll wash your car. But I can’t come and talk about the movie.“ But he said please come and talk about the movie. So I did.

They loved the movie, and they laughed. Remember the end of that great Preston Sturges movie, Sullivan’s Travels? It was like that. Suddenly you see 500 people who have had the worst misfortune, who lost everything, who have no homes, no prospects, a government that doesn’t really care enough about them — and for two hours they just enjoy themselves. You understand the power of cinema, the healing power of cinema. There’s something in cinema that can accelerate healing, because it creates a space where you feel better about yourself, about your future.

We stayed over because it was late, and in the morning at breakfast they showed me a young man and a young woman sitting at a table. ‘These people met on Oct. 7. He was running around the kibbutz, he had no place to go; she had a safe house and she let him in. They spent eight hours together, and now they’re together.’

And there was this hilarious conversation about eight of them being stuck in a safe room for hours and hours, and one of them had to pee. What do you do? It became like a comedy routine — what kitchen utensils do you use? Pots? Pans? And they were laughing their heads off.

We think of these people just as victims. But these are real people, and they have a life — and what’s more important, they had a life before Oct. 7. Some of it was happy, some of it was sad. And I said, wow, it would be really interesting to find people who thought Oct. 6 was the very worst day of their lives.

Emilio Schenker, our producer, hired researchers who introduced me to survivors who’d had miserable failures in their lives before Oct. 7. I interviewed all of them, and it was fascinating, because they walked into this disaster and they were just trying to survive, but through that they reconsidered their lives. Coming out alive, many talked about change, about how things cannot continue as they are. Obviously the greater metaphor is national: you have to change the government that allowed this. But on a personal level, too, you need to live your life differently.

And so much of it was funny, because these are petty problems — problems between a father and daughter, between a religious girl and a drug dealer — all small stuff compared to the enormity of the event. I thought that was charming, and that it’s the first step toward healing.

There’s no great heroism in the movie. It’s not an action movie. It’s barely a movie about Oct. 7. It’s a movie about redemption. It’s a movie about the Kabbalistic term Tikkun, which comes from the Hebrew word meaning ‘to fix.’ It’s normally meant religious but it can also be existential, about changing your life understanding what led you to be miserable.

In the film there are criticisms of the Israeli government, and of the military failures that allowed the attack. Did those come from the people you spoke to, or are they your own views?

If you remember, there’s only one moment of a guy saying something bad about an Israeli minister — that the Israeli government was supporting Hamas, using them to weaken the PLO. All the criticism comes from television. Because these people are far too busy trying to survive…Nobody gets up on a soapbox and badmouths the Israeli government. But believe you me, the Israeli government is not happy that this movie is coming out two weeks before the election.

You’ve deliberately put the humanity of the characters first, not the political framing. But with a film like this, in this moment, is it even possible to avoid the political conversation?

I’ve always thought the best way to make a movie that has political impact is not to wave flags. Again I’ll go back to Vietnam, which made a big impression on me. The movie I thought had the most effect on the anti-war movement was MASH, the Robert Altman movie that took place in Korea. It was a comedy, and somehow making fun of the military really kneecapped much of that American establishment.

Movies should address everybody, not just people who think as you do, because otherwise it’s preaching to the choir. So don’t be aggressive about putting in messages. I never give answers. I just ask questions, and I want people to think for themselves. Is this right? Is this wrong? One critic wrote a beautiful line: that the movie will really make you think, but especially it will make you think about your own life. That’s what I think movies should do.