(RNS) — You can imagine it as a bit on “Saturday Night Live’s” “Weekend Update”: A prestigious film festival initially refused to show a film documenting an atrocity because the perpetrators of that atrocity did not give their permission.
The Toronto International Film Festival announced last week that it would decline to screen “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue,” which tells the story of retired Maj. Gen. Noam Tibon, who set out to save his son, journalist Amir Tibon, and Amir’s family as they were attacked by Hamas at their home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the Gaza border.
Why? Because the film, by Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich from a book about the incident, included raw footage taken by Hamas itself, and the terrorist group had not “authorized” that footage for use.
Even though Hamas gleefully filmed their atrocities — sometimes on the mobile phones of the victims themselves — and uploaded the videos to Facebook and other social media.
After an outcry, the film festival has since backtracked and will include “The Road Between Us” in its programming. But its initial refusal struck a nerve, especially in the Jewish community, which has seen other work by Jews canceled and a “chill,” in the words of The New York Times, cast over Jewish authors.
Film poster for “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue.” (Courtesy photo)
This was not about one film festival’s decision. It was about the chronicling of Oct. 7 itself. There is that line in “Hamilton” — “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” The Jews live; the Jews died; who gets to tell this story? Israel and the Jews, who were the victims? Or Hamas, who were the perpetrators?
The controversy over “The Road Between Us” came in the days after Tisha B’Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem. The day has traditionally been an occasion for remembering various acts of violence against Jewish communities throughout history. Memory is itself an act of redemption.
Oct. 7 is now seared into the Jewish calendar alongside other days of grief. To tell its story fully is to honor the dead. There are those who gleefully deny the Holocaust, or minimize its extent and number of victims. The same thing is true of Oct. 7, especially on social media. Some, perhaps many, would seek to erase the memory of Oct. 7.
Had the Toronto Film Festival silenced the telling of this story, based on a bizarre sense of what constitutes intellectual property, it would have been a betrayal of memory. It would have granted Hamas a veto over how their crimes are remembered.
The Toronto Jewish community, and their allies, would not allow the memory of Oct. 7 to be sullied in such a way. They fought back. The TIFF reversed itself. “The Road Between Us” will be screened at Roy Thomson Hall on Sept. 10 at 2:00 p.m.
Noah Shack, the CEO of Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said in a statement, “It should never have been a question whether one of our leading cultural institutions would showcase a story of courage and survival. There is an urgent need for accountability to ensure this can never happen again — at TIFF or anywhere else.”
Now, there’s one more thing anyone who is able must do: go see “The Road Between Us.” Let’s make it the most-watched film at TIFF and, eventually, on screens across the country. Everyone needs to see the real cost of unchecked extremism — and the bravery of those who stand in defense of human life and our shared values.
What can we learn from this?
First, activism works. Shack in his statement praised the Canadian Jewish community for refusing to remain silent and using their social and cultural capital to challenge TIFF’s initial decision. But he also cited “civic leaders, elected officials, artists, and people from all backgrounds.”
This is about allyship. Jews did not fight this battle alone. Non-Jews joined the battle because they knew that Hamas should not get to decide whether the world sees what it did on Oct. 7. That belongs to the victims, to their families and, ultimately, to history. They sensed that allowing a misplaced sensitivity to Hamas’ sensitivities to dictate the terms of this memory would be a violation of the victims, all over again.
TIFF’s initial mistake still stings. But, it contains a lesson of hope. It demonstrates that the Jewish community can raise its voice, and that the community is the sum total of its parts — individual Jewish voices. More than that: It shows that our moral concerns are contagious, that allies will join us, and that just as we speak truth to power, so, too, we must speak truth to culture.
The Talmud says: “Silence is tantamount to consent.”
We were not silent.
We did not consent.