Filmmaker Wendy Sachs[Missing Credit]
Using footage taken from around and inside campuses – much of it from mobile phones – the film documents how it felt to be Jewish in an environment with graffiti declaring that “Jews are Nazis”, as happened at the University of Pennsylvania, or calling for those supporting Israel just after October 7 to be “gas chambered”. Jewish students describe how their peers attempted to make their university “Zionist-free zones”, have Jews removed as leaders of student bodies or challenge anyone suspected of being Jewish of walking through the campus in order to make them declare whether or not they are Zionists. In another sequence there is apparently no attempt to stop one protester bearing the sign “kill the hostages”.
Perhaps the most startling of the film’s revelations is an FBI secret recording of a gathering of Hamas leaders taken in a Philadelphia Marriott hotel in 1993. The conversation records Hamas’s plans to make their objectives “palatable to Americans” by using language associated with human rights causes. The film argues the strategy has informed the rhetoric and tactics used by the Student for Justice in Palestine network (SJP), which the documentary claims is also funded by charities with connections to Hamas.
“That wiretap is the big reveal in the film,” says Sachs. The documentary became the highest grossing documentary in American cinemas when it was released there nearly a year ago. Yet it has failed to find cinemas or broadcasters in the UK willing to show the documentary.
Talia Khan, a half-Jewish, half-Muslim MIT graduate student and student activist who appears in October 8[Missing Credit]
“It’s not just that we couldn’t get into screens in the United Kingdom,” says Sachs speaking from her office in New York. “There’s more going on. We were rejected from every major film festival where we submitted the film. I was even told by someone who curates at one festival in New York that our film was rejected because of the ideology of the curators of the festival.”
Sachs is quick to point out that any documentary that is not about music, true crime or sport is difficult to land. But there seems to be a prejudice against Jewish narratives with a connection to the October 7 attack she says.
A film-maker is rarely certain of the reason when their film is refused. But where October 8, which was originally entitled October H8te, was rejected by a festival Sachs noted that often four or five films telling Palestinian perspectives would be accepted. And then something happened that confirmed the director’s worst fears.
“We did get a distribution deal in Canada. The two heads of the company were very supportive of the film but their younger staffers refused to work on it. That also happened in Australia. We had a distribution company signed and at the very last minute I find out that that members on the company’s board refused to be a part of the film. They dropped us.”
Where the film did find cinemas and distributors willing to screen the documentary, yet another problem emerged. More protests. So a film that showed how Jewish students were being intimidated by pro-Palestinian protesters was itself experiencing protests that discomforted those Jews who wanted to see the film.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Sachs. “When we went to Montreal there were big protests. So I went. I had no problem flying in and getting into the fray. I don’t want Jewish audiences or anyone else to be afraid to go to a movie.”
On another occasion Sachs was also struck how her film required security whereas the Oscar-winning Palestinian/Israeli documentary No Other Land, about the harsh realities for Palestinians under Israeli occupation, required no security at all.
“We were in Toronto and did a private screening of October 8 at TIFF [the Toronto International Film Festival]. No Other Land was also playing. They didn’t have any security. We on the other hand had to have metal detectors and private security and I think that is an issue that is so worthy of discussion. There is no fear or threat of violence for Palestinian film-makers or for their movies. But when October 8 is playing and it becomes like a Jewish event, there is security everywhere.”
Sachs also has evidence that streaming platforms are worried about the effect of including her film in their content.
“What I would hear from people in Hollywood was that streamers are worried about subscriptions being cancelled if October 8 was included,” says Sachs.
Since last week the film is now accessible in the UK on Prime, Apple TV and Google TV, but only on a pay-for-play basis.
Sachs is careful not to assume a sinister reason behind every refusal to air or screen the film. But “people have been had” by the “big lie circulating to delegitimise Israel and to dehumanise Jews”. She says the campaign is “well-funded, strategic and not going away”.
“I’m not saying everyone hates us,” she adds. “It’s more nuanced than that.” And she still hopes the film will get a streaming deal. “I think we’re a very good fit for Netflix,” says the director. “I’m hopeful they’ll take another look at us.”
October 8 can be accessed on Prime, Apple TV and Google TV
