'Our Loves' is a film about people, not October 7, Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher tells 'Post'

‘When something horrible happens to you, you can succumb to the tragedy and get swallowed by the abyss – to paraphrase Nietzsche – or you can say, ‘OK, what do we do now? What do we change?’” said Avi Nesher, whose latest movie, Our Loves, is a beautiful and moving film about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It’s suspenseful, sad, and sometimes even funny, the kind of movie that can change the way you see the world – and yourself. It tells the stories of a group of people “who think they are having the worst day of their lives on October 6, 2023” and who go on to spend much of the movie fighting to survive the attack that begins a day later.

Our Loves will have its world premiere on September 13 at the Toronto International Film Festival, in the prestigious Centerpiece section. It will then open the Haifa International Film Festival on September 26 and will be released in theaters throughout Israel on October 15, prior to an international release.

It is Nesher’s 22nd feature film and probably the most anticipated movie he has ever made. He became one of Israel’s leading directors decades ago when he released the now-classic movies The Troupe (Ha-Lahaka) and Dizengoff 99, back-to-back in the late ’70s. After their success, Hollywood called, and he spent over a decade making genre films there. But he just couldn’t quit Israel and came back in 2001, releasing an extraordinary series of diverse and quintessentially Israeli movies over the last two decades, such as Turn Left at the End of the World (2004) and The Matchmaker (2010).

Now in his early 70s, he might be expected to be winding down his career, especially after his family suffered a tragedy in 2018, when his son Ari was killed in an accident at the age of 17. His daughter, director Tom Nesher, made Come Closer in 2024, a movie about a young woman who loses her brother that was clearly inspired by Ari’s death, but Nesher prefers to make movies that explore his emotions without delving too closely into his biography. Following his loss, he chose to keep working and made some of the best films in recent years, including Image of Victory, a drama about young people on a southern kibbutz during the Independence War.

A film about October 7?

After the Hamas massacre took place on October 7, 2023, it seemed obvious to many that Nesher would want to make sense of the tragedy by creating a film about it, although he didn’t quite see it that way at first.

“I was at home, horrified. Horrified,” he said, when I asked him about his experience on that day. “It was something that couldn’t possibly have happened. It seemed like, somehow, we were getting it all wrong, because this cannot happen. Yes, we can get some missiles shot at Tel Aviv. OK. We can have a few Hamas people penetrating the border. OK. But we cannot have Hamas people inside the kibbutzim. That’s not Israel. That’s not the Israel I grew up in, and it’s not part of my sense of safety living in this country. Hamas people in all those kibbutzim? Unbelievable. People on the roads, people in Ofakim. Oh God, this cannot be happening. And then you go: Where is the government?... No one knew anything.”

The shock brought back memories for him of an earlier war, in which the IDF and government were similarly blindsided. “I’m a veteran of the Yom Kippur War, so I know about impending doom,” he said.

Nesher, who spent much of his adolescence in New York, where his family moved because of his father’s career, and who attended Columbia University, came back to Israel to join the army. He initially served in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit until he sustained an injury and was an intelligence officer when the Yom Kippur War broke out.

“October 7 was even worse, because in 1973, I was a soldier. I had something to do,” he said.

In the weeks following October 7, as he reeled in shock along with the rest of the country, it didn’t cross his mind to make a movie about the attack.

“Early on... there’s just trying to survive, trying to bounce back, grieving. I know a thing or two about losing dear ones. My heart breaks every day,” he said.

The fact that he could empathize so deeply with those who had lost family on October 7 initially made him feel less, rather than more, inclined to make a movie about it. “People asked me if I wanted to make a movie about October 7, and I said, ‘No, no, no. You can’t make a movie about October 7. It has to be done by historians.’”

An unexpected and deeply moving experience soon led him to change his mind, which was connected to the release of his film The Monkey House, a literary mystery/comedy, a week before October 7.  It received rave reviews and sold over 100,000 tickets – until the war broke out and the theaters closed.

“But I thought: Who cares about that? There’s so much horror around.” Then he got a call from a man from one of the kibbutzim that was decimated in the massacre, who told him he and his wife had bought advance tickets for the movie and had been looking forward to seeing it on the evening of October 7. Housed in a hotel at the Dead Sea following the massacre, he asked if Nesher could bring them the movie and show it there.

'My last memory of myself as a human being'

Nesher was a bit bewildered by the call. “But then this man said, ‘It’s my last memory of myself as a human being. The last time I remember myself just living my life, just buying tickets. So, please bring your movie.’ I said, ‘Of course I’ll get you the movie. No problem.’ And he says, ‘And I want you to come and talk about the movie.’

“But I said, ‘This I cannot do.’ Because when I had that awful time, with what happened to Ari, if somebody had talked to me about cinema, I would have slapped him. What the f***? And he said, ‘No, no, we’re not like that.’ I told him my own story, which he knew, and he said, ‘No, it’s different. Please come.’ Of course, you cannot say no. I came there, and I went up on stage and apologized. And he said, ‘Please, Mr. Nesher, let’s see the movie.’ They screened the movie, and they laughed. A lot. And they clapped at the end. A lot. I got up on stage, and it was the longest Q&A I’ve ever done in my life.”

It ended so late that he stayed over in the hotel and spent more time with them, learning their stories.

At breakfast, they told him, “‘You see these two young people sitting in a corner? They met on October 7. Because he was running, he had no place to go, and she took a chance and opened her mamad [safe room] and let him in. And now they’re a couple.’ They fell in love. Can you imagine? With all this horror and bloodiness, can you imagine? Suddenly you feel these people are trying somehow to regain sanity. They’re trying to grab hold of what’s left. They kept telling me more about the way they got into October 7, more about what they were doing before October 7, than about October 7. And then someone jokingly said there were some people who actually thought October 6 was the worst day of their lives.”

A movie about the human spirit

This was a lightbulb moment for Nesher. “I said, ‘Really? Like who?’ Mostly people with severe romantic problems or family problems, they said.  And I said, ‘Hmm. That’s interesting.’ I thought maybe I could make a movie not ‘about October 7’ – of course, you go into October 7 – but you make a movie about the human spirit, and especially the Israeli spirit, which ultimately triumphs. Then you can make a movie that will give hope.

“Because it seemed to me: You think October 6 is the worst day of your life, then you go through the horrible ordeal. You make it out alive somehow. And then you have to rethink all of your life. If I survived this, how do I make it better? It’s a movie about change… It has to do with a personal, possibly with the national, redemption. Things have to change. I thought that was really interesting.”

He turned to Emilio Schenker, the CEO of the Israel-based, global entertainment company, SIPUR. “Emilio completely understood the vision, which is rare – and they hired three wonderful researchers who scouted and found people who survived October 7 who had personal, romantic, parental, religious, and whatever other kind of problems.”

People opened up to him and his researchers, and he began writing. “My thing was basically to use only what they told me. Not to make anything up. It’s so interesting, because you make a movie whose first third will play almost like a romantic comedy, and then the sky will fall. Then you have to survive somehow. And then, when you come out, you have to reconsider everything, and you have to appreciate life. You have to say, ‘Life is a great gift, and I’m here.’ Again, I know about this stuff because this is pretty much what I went through myself, with Ari.”

Our Loves is true cinema

Our Loves presents a stark contrast to previous movies and television series that have focused on the attack, which were basically reenactments of the experiences of real people with actors. Instead, Our Loves is a carefully shaped dramatic story, true cinema, that features three-dimensional characters and even some darkly funny moments. It opens at a concert on the night of October 5, 2023, where most of the main characters happen to be, for different reasons.

These include a religious young woman, Sapir (Daniel Gimpel), who has just been dumped by a guy she hoped she would marry and who has decided to rebel by attending the Nova music festival, and who ends up running and hiding with a drug dealer (Leib Levin) who keeps his stash in his underwear. There’s also a retired general, Shabi (Shalom Michaelswilli), who is suing his ex-wife to force her to sell their house, which deepens the rift between him and his children, especially his young adult daughter (Noa Cohen). The latter storyline will remind people of several real-life stories of retired generals who grabbed a weapon and headed south when the attack began, but it has a twist.

“This guy was really a son of a bitch. He was a terrible father,” Nesher said. He managed to use this story to insert some comic moments into the film. Many of them involve four hopeless recruits, who have only been in the army a week – “the leftovers of the leftovers of the leftovers” – whom the retired general picks up along the way to help him in his quest.

“Now, in a way, this guy has to become their parent because he has to somehow make them into fighters.” One of the most moving and surprising aspects of the story is how, in the course of schooling these bumbling soldiers, the retired general is schooled as well.

“It’s easier being a hero than being a human being,” said Nesher. “I don’t mean to downplay heroism. But some of these people were amazingly flawed as human beings. And they did a heroic deed because it was the right thing to do. But then the event changed them... The trick was to make a movie about people caught in a situation, not about the situation.”

Eventually, he gave the script to Schenker. “Emilio read it and said, ‘This is great writing. It’s not a war movie. It’s about people,’” said Nesher. At a later stage, two important international producers, Danny Cohen, president of Access Entertainment, and Fernando Szew, president and head of FOX Entertainment Studios, signed on as co-producers. Moshe Edery, Nesher’s longtime collaborator, also co-produced the movie for United King Films.

Nesher has made movies about true historical stories in the past, but never before had he done a movie where the majority of the cast and crew had lost friends in the event, and the filming was an emotional roller coaster.

“Interestingly, in the crew we had two girls who were at Nova. They came to work for us in order to deal with the fear of going back. It was amazing to see them dealing with trauma,” Nesher said.

While it is hard to discuss specifics of the plot without revealing spoilers, Our Loves ends with a character uttering the line, “I’m not leaving.”

When asked what the line refers to, Nesher mentioned a moment in this character’s storyline but agreed that it could have a deeper significance as well. I asked whether, on some level, it is he who is making this affirmation, especially since he could have stayed in Hollywood and been sitting by his pool today.

He acknowledged that was true. “Obviously, it’s appropriate for this character to be saying this, but this message is my message… Yeah, I could have stayed in Hollywood and made American movies. Easily.”

The movie has gotten great word-of-mouth reaction from previews in Israel, and Nesher spoke with anticipation about showing it abroad. It will be the sixth time one of his movies has premiered at Toronto, although a few things will undoubtedly be different this time around.

“The great thing about the Toronto Film Festival is that they’ve always stood for great cinematic values. As opposed to other festivals that are about ideology – if you say the right word, they’ll get you in – Toronto was always about cinema. They have great taste. They have great people selecting films. I guess they just saw the movie and thought it belonged. That’s why they put it in Centerpiece, which has great movies. I salute these people, and I salute this festival and all the values it stands for,” he said.

Israeli movies in the current film industry

He is aware, of course, that many in the film industry have called for all Israeli movies to be boycotted.

“In the ’60s we knew how to protest – all these great antiwar marches. But they were against the US government. Against Robert McNamara. LBJ, against the Vietnam War... Nobody thought for a second of boycotting Hollywood. Nobody thought for a second of boycotting American literature or American music or Andy Warhol.”

Nesher is no cheerleader for the Israeli government and spoke openly about his hope that the elections will bring a change in leadership. Noting that at the time of the October 7 attack, about half of all Israelis were fighting to preserve and strengthen democracy against government interference, he said, “As always, at the forefront of every fight for democracy are people from the arts. So, you want to stay away from movies and culture and handicap the people fighting for democracy?... Either you are really stupid, which I don’t think you are, or there is a tinge of antisemitism in this, because you did not boycott Iranian art. You did not boycott the art of any other country when you disagreed with their government.”

He knows that there may be protests in Toronto against Our Loves, and he is ready for them. “For me, this conflict is not about land. The conflict is about story. The conflict is about narrative,” and he is eager to present this narrative to audiences.

He is also well aware that he is likely to be asked why the story is not told, at least in part, from the perspective of the Hamas terrorists.

“Actually, I got an offer from an Italian producer: If I would do Our Loves like Image of Victory [which features a major character who is an Egyptian photojournalist embedded with Egyptian troops], he would come in with an investment of a million euros,” said Nesher.

“I told this producer, ‘Sadly, I cannot do it.’ In Image of Victory, I could write the Egyptian side because the Egyptian side was just like us, only in Arabic,” he said. “But Hamas is a whole different thing. It’s like ISIS... I would not know how to direct Charles Manson, how to tell his story.  I just would not know.”

When it comes to Hamas, “I do not know how to direct people who did these horrible things... I do not understand the guy who gets pleasure out of killing a baby, out of burning families alive. So, I did not take the money. And we made the movie anyway.”

Toward the end of Our Loves, some characters make it to a hospital, and the doctor in charge is an Arab physician, played by Hisham Suliman.

“Twenty percent of the population is Arab, and they’re going to remain here, and there has to be a way of making it work,” he said. “The truth is, it simply wouldn’t be realistic if I showed a hospital in Israel without Arab employees. But beyond that, it makes a point: Let’s not get confused. Arabs are not our enemy. Hamas is our enemy. It’s a whole different thing.”

The more he talks, the more it becomes obvious that he is the perfect director to tell this story right now: An Israeli who is equally comfortable in America, but also an ardent Zionist who cares deeply about what happens in Israel. It’s clear from his personal story that he empathizes with grieving families and can identify with all those who suffered loss on October 7 and since. And he wants to fight back with the most potent weapon he knows – story.

“That’s the beauty of cinema. Cinema gets you to accept a different normal than the one you’ve been told before… And again, there’s this Israeli spirit, which I have admired since young childhood. I think that’s why we all live in this country even though it makes no sense at all. We’re not going anywhere. We’re not leaving,” he said, echoing his movie’s last line.