For concertgoers at the Nova Music Festival in Israel, the morning of Oct. 7 began with a beautiful sunrise, as DJs performed their propulsive rave tracks. But what was supposed to be a joyful, peaceful celebration of music and dance quickly turned into tragedy and horror, as Hamas initiated a terrorist attack against Israel — ultimately claiming the lives of hundreds of festivalgoers.
The events of the day are chronicled in the chilling documentary “We Will Dance Again,” which was nominated by the Producers Guild. Filmmaker Yariv Mozer uses cell-phone videos, social media posts, interviews with survivors, and Hamas footage to recreate a painstaking, minute-by-minute account of the day’s events.
“On the 7th October, being a documentary filmmaker, I asked myself where and how should I contribute and where should I be?” he tells Gold Derby in our exclusive video interview above, realizing that history was happening around him. Two days later, he found himself on the site of the massacre, one of the first journalists there. “Nothing prepared me for what I’ve seen there. Everything was still untouched. You could see parts of bodies. The smell was horrific.”
He and his team immediately started collecting as much footage as they could — from TikTok, from Instagram, as well as from Telegram, where Hamas had been uploading their own videos. “My goal was that I need a lot of material to be able to show the truth and the truth from both angles,” he says. “So it’s not only the survivors, but also Hamas to be able to show it as an evidence. This is true. Look at it. I’m not touching it. I’m just placing it in front of you for you to judge by yourself.”
Mozer acknowledges that the Israel/Hamas war is complicated, with many nuances and complexities. The intent of his film, though, he explains, is to shine a light on the act of terror that happened that day. “Do you really agree with acts of terror being done to people, harmless people, children, women, men, sexual crimes? That is not legitimate in my eyes,” he says. “Of course, there is in war collateral damage. [But] you do not target people that raise their hands like you see in the film and shoot them. That is exactly what I see as terror.”
After sourcing hundreds of survivors’ stories, Mozer worked meticulously with them to determine whose stories were best to include, making sure each was also secure from a psychological and mental health standpoint. He invited them to the editing room, as well, and then finally to screen a rough cut. “It was one of the hardest screenings I’ve ever had in my life,” he says. “They were crying from beginning to the end, but they truly gave me the support, the power to continue. They trusted me and at the same time encouraged me to continue with the film and gave me the support that I was looking for, which was amazing.”
He’s still in close touch with the survivors in the film, including Elad Hakim, who attended a recent screening on the Paramount lot. “That is the most difficult thing in creating this film‚ the fact that there are still hostages and most of the survivors are telling me that their story is still ongoing, that they cannot leave it behind because their friends are still in Gaza, that for them, as long as the war is going on, as long as the hostages are being held in Gaza, then it’s an ongoing story. They still can’t put it behind them,” he says.
“I cannot say goodbye to this film. It is a still ongoing process, and I wish for the hostages to come back home.”
