The veteran Israeli filmmaker (“Past Life”) discusses his movie depicting the October 7 attacks — and the aftermath — ahead of its world premiere at TIFF. The terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, wherein Hamas and other Palestinian militants poured across the Gaza-Israel barrier into southern Israel, attacking 21 communities and killing 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals (and abducting an additional 251 people), have been revisited a number of times via documentaries (“We Will Dance Again”) and miniseries (“One Day in October”), but now it is coming to the silver screen. Premiering in the Centrepiece section of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, “Our Loves” follows five Israeli men and women in the days leading up to and on October 7.
There is Liri (Noa Cohen), a young woman struggling with her father Shabi (Shalom Michaelshvili) divorcing her mother; Milly (Magi Azarzar), a policewoman hiding her pregnant fiancée from her mother; Nicco (Yaniv Biton), a security guard at the Nova music festival; and Sapir (Daniel Gimpel), a young woman freshly dumped by her boyfriend who wishes to dance the pain away. Their lives are upended by the horrific attacks of October 7 and they’re forced to put the pieces back together. Nesher spent four years as an analyst in the IDF before becoming a director, and he is adamant that the movie is not an October 7 film, despite the final hour-plus of its two-hour runtime depicting the violent attacks across Israel, including the Nova music festival massacre.
It is not about the event itself, but about the people who were unwillingly caught up in it. Their inner lives, their choices, and the universal human truths that emerge when everything familiar falls apart,” Nesher said in a director’s statement for TIFF. Up for 12 Ophir Awards — the Israeli Oscar — including Best Film, and serving as the opening night selection of the Haifa International Film Festival, “Our Loves” is poised to provoke plenty of conversation throughout festival and awards season.
Ahead of its world premiere at TIFF, Variety spoke with Nesher about “Our Loves,” the October 7 attacks, the subsequent war on Gaza that’s claimed the lives of 73,000 Palestinians, Benjamin Netanyahu’s culpability and more. I had a movie called “The Monkey House” that came out that year, in 2023, and it got really great reviews and opened to the biggest box office that any Israeli movie had that year, but it opened the week before October 7. We had this amazing first week and then all the movie houses were closed.
My problems are miniscule or nothing compared to what happened, which is a big shock that one could compare to 9/11; it shook Israelis in more ways than you can imagine, and it went on for days and days and days, so one couldn’t step out of it. One was left paralyzed from the shock and sadness. I was faced with a similar sentiment six, seven years ago when I had a tragedy in my family that felt paralyzing and like we would never return back to normalcy.
I lost my son, who was killed in a traffic accident. So, you’re paralyzed and you want to do something to help out. I got a call from somebody from a kibbutz down south that was badly damaged and many people were killed there.
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