The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Canada has pulled a documentary by an Israeli filmmaker about the October 7 massacre.
The move came reportedly over worries Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups may hold rights to footage of the carnage included in the movie.
On August 12, TIFF management officially uninvited the producers of The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue as reported by movie news site Deadline.com.
Apparently, the main point of contention was that the film festival demanded proof of legal clearance for the rights to all the footage included in the movie. This included recordings of the slaughter of more than 1,200 Israelis, including women and children, recorded and live-streamed by the Islamist terrorists who committed the massacre. The footage has been shown publicly repeatedly in the past without issue.
Previously, the producers had already agreed to several changes requested by TIFF management to “mitigate anticipated and known risks around the screening of a film about highly sensitive subject matter, including potential threat of significant disruption”.
This included changing the name of the film, which was previously titled Out of Nowhere: The Ultimate Rescue. The team was also asked to provide extra security for the screening.
That told the story of Noam Tibon, a retired Israeli general who on October 7 drove into the midst of the ongoing Hamas attack to rescue his family as well as several survivors of the Nova music festival – where terrorists from Gaza murdered 378 young partygoers and personnel.
The filmmakers around director Barry Avrich said they were “shocked and saddened that a venerable film festival has defied its mission and censored its own programming by refusing this film … We are not political filmmakers, nor are we activists; we are storytellers.
“We remain defiant, we will release the film, and we invite audiences, broadcasters, and streamers to make up their own mind, once they have seen it.”
TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey on August 13 rejected claims the festival had rejected the film due to censorship, writing in a letter to the TIFF community: “I remain committed to working with the filmmaker to meet TIFF’s screening requirements to allow the film to be screened at this year’s festival. I have asked our legal team to work with the filmmaker on considering all options available.”
The TIFF has been in the focus of criticism in the past. In 2024, it was criticised for screening the movie Russians at War, a Russian documentary about the lives of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and which was accused of distributing pro-Russian propaganda.
