“To leave a trace”: an Israeli documentary traces the October 7 massacre at the Nova festival

An Israeli documentary traces the October 7 massacre in the vicinity of Reim, where more than 350 participants in a techno music festival, Tribe of Nova, were killed by Hamas commandos. The 52-minute film, made from videos filmed at the time of the unprecedented attack by the Islamist movement, was screened Wednesday in Jerusalem in front of around twenty international journalists. Nova, this is its title, is a dive into the memories of those who, among more than 3,000 people, came to dance in the open air, five kilometers from the Gaza Strip, and who found themselves on the route of hundreds of armed men entering Israel where they committed a massacre.

“I wanted to tell the story of a party,” explains Dan Peer, the director, who explains having worked day and night for two months, with around fifteen people, to put together 212 elements – videos, voice messages, camera surveillance - mainly entrusted by survivors. He chose to avoid the most shocking images “out of respect for the victims”, but the documentary is no less disturbing.

We see messages exchanged by a group of friends about the outfits to choose before hitting the road, people dancing while eating candy. “I'm so scared,” comments a young man, saying he is “high,” as he films the first rockets launched at Israel as the sun rises. Before a back and forth between images of fighters wishing for deaths "by the thousands", and revelers, who call their parents, trying to understand "why the army is not there", if it is better to hide or run away.

For long minutes, with the phone on board, we see crazy races in the fields, barely interrupted to relieve injured friends. Many pray as bullets whistle all around them. Many say they film themselves “to leave a mark”, to tell their loved ones that they love them. In a car, panic consumes a group trying to leave the site when they think they recognize a loved one among dozens of corpses abandoned on the asphalt.

Arriving early in the afternoon, a police officer films his first steps in the middle of the disaster, his hands trembling. "A sign of life?" he repeats tirelessly, his voice more and more strangled, as he progresses around a festival bar, behind which more than a dozen people have died. The documentary produced by the Kastina company will be broadcast free of charge, in an unusual move, by all Israeli channels.

The Hamas attack left around 1,140 dead on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on the latest official Israeli figures. In retaliation, Israel, which promised to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, has been bombing the Gaza Strip since October 7 where 20,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed, according to the latest Hamas government report published Wednesday.

Some 250 people were taken hostage, including around forty festival-goers. A total of 129 are still being held in Gaza.