Hollywood: Make Movies Jewish Again

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has always been a highlight of cultural life in Canada. As a graduate student at the University of Toronto, I would often walk over to the festival and catch a movie. Celebrities walk like normal people there. One time I found myself crossing the street as Brad Pitt was crossing in the opposite direction.

This past week, it has been the site of an ugly conflict. First, TIFF approved the screening of “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue”, directed by Barry Avrich. The film is a documentary about the heroism of Noam Tibon, who saved many, including his own family, during the Hamas massacre of October 7. Then the screening was cancelled. After an outcry, the film was reinstated.

Why did the Toronto film festival disinvite a movie that shows the terror of Hamas and the heroism of Jews? Because, they claimed, the film included footage that Hamas made while committing the attacks, and Hamas has not granted permission for those videos to be used. TIFF judged the film to be illegitimate. Just underneath the surface, the implication was that Israel is illegitimate, and that Jewish pain is not really legitimate either. That’s how gatekeeping works.

We live in a moment when waves of offense and counter-offense have become a spectator sport, and the topics involved are often scandalous and fleeting. Most of the time, these battles are sound and fury that signify nothing.

Not so this time.

The idea of legitimacy is central to the conflict surrounding Israel in the wider world. Those who denounce Israel claim that it is a “settler-colonial” and “apartheid” state. These terms grossly distort the past and present: Jews are native to Israel, so how can Jews colonize our own land? And Israel is a multicultural democracy, which is exactly what apartheid is not. So why make claims that are so contrary to basic facts? Because the point is to delegitimize Israel. To rob the Jewish nation of its story is to invite rage and violence against Jews.

Contrary to the fantasies of antisemites, Jews do not control Hollywood. But we have been successful there, and that success started before the Second World War. When Jews were shut out of most employment opportunities, we turned to California and made movies. The wit and inventiveness of the Jewish experience became central to the cinematic culture of America.

So Hollywood did not start out as a guardian of the memory of the Holocaust. That happened by historical accident. It’s a difficult topic, but we have never been scared of addressing difficult topics. From “Schindler’s List” to “A Real Pain”, we have told stories that wrestle with the past and the present, with memory and fear, with being a person as well as a people.

Those films won Oscars and were deeply influential. But all the while, that acclaim was accompanied by irritation. We were told, in whispers and then in plain voice, enough already. No more Holocaust films.

What happened in Toronto is proof that we need courage, now more than ever, in the fields of cultural production: campuses, festivals, movies, and the media. We need films about October 7, and films about 1943. We need films that show us these horrors, and also show us the ethical complexity of Europe as well as Gaza. We need films that prove that Jewish pain will not be erased, and also films that confront the challenges of survival.

I had the honor of hearing David Schwimmer address the spike in antisemitism at the Anti-Defamation League “Never is Now” conference in New York this past March. At one point, he spoke with urgency to his peers in the entertainment industry: “So many have chosen not to say anything publicly at all. And if I can say something directly to them: I really wish you would.”