War in the Middle East – Israeli filmmakers fight for the release of the Hamas hostages

2023-10-19 16:28:50

One of the most moving videos shows Ilay David talking about his brother Evyatar, four years his junior. He was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. He was at the music festival in the Negev desert not far from Gaza. There were many deaths there, many kidnappings. One photo shows him smiling, with a large purple hibiscus flower behind his ear. “I imagine my brother didn’t even run,” says Ilay David into the camera. “He just kept running as the bullets flew past him until he finally raised his arms and they arrested him.” In his mind, he constantly communicates with his brother. “You’re almost there, you’ll be home soon.” And then he makes an appeal to everyone who sees this video: “Bring my brother back home.”

Evyatar David is one of 200 people, including children, women and the elderly, kidnapped by Hamas. The filmmakers Smadar Zamir and Eliran Peled responded immediately. They initiated the #BringThemHomeNow project over the weekend. In response to their call, 40 people responded whose friends or relatives were among those kidnapped. Directors Ari Folman (“Waltz with Bashir”) and Jasmine Kainy conducted the interviews, and many others filmed, recorded, edited, translated, and so on. There are around 50 of them and they all work without pay.

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Some relatives of Israeli hostages are crying, others are eerily composed

The website #BringThemHomeNow is continually updated. But there have also been situations in which a film was already finished and then the person’s body was found, says Yael Reuveny, an Israeli filmmaker who lives in Berlin and is helping to publicize the project here. The films are primarily aimed at an international audience, with the wish that these people are not forgotten.

There are videos that are one and a half to three minutes long and those that are 30 to 60 seconds long that anyone can share on social media. Because the media is pretty quiet about the 200 kidnapped people, but the videos make it clear in a disturbing way which fates are hidden behind this number, which people.

There’s Omer Shem Tov’s mother, who says she won’t clean up his messy room until her son comes home. Neta Heiman, who already has gray hair herself, imagines that her 84-year-old mother somewhere in the Gaza Strip looks after everyone because that is her nature. “If you let them,” she says. Then she bursts into tears. A mother talks about her daughter Daphna, a tenth grader, who is in the hands of Hamas. You can see a photo of a slim girl in a white sweatshirt. The mother seems incredibly composed. “Shortly after two I got a call from my sister saying Daphna had been kidnapped.” A call, a sentence that changed everything.