HaReshima Shel Oz

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Oz Davidian—a lawyer who runs a farm in the Negev not far from the Nova music festival—receives distress calls on his mobile phone from desperate parents. They beg him to rescue their children from the terrorists at the festival. After 15 trips, he has saved 120 young men and women. The film conveys to the audience the tension inherent in the footage from the festival, the mobile phone recordings made by those fleeing, the bodycam footage from Hamas terrorists, and, above all, the view from Oz’s car camera. These images are accompanied by the emotional reality of his subsequent encounters with the people he rescued. The footage, the voices, and the faces help us to sense—and perhaps even begin to understand—the seemingly endless trauma.
(Frank Stern)