The intersecting lives of several people are the subject of Avi Nesher’s Our Loves, a new Israeli film that just premiered at TIFF, detailing the events of October 7, 2023.
We start on October 5 with retired policeman Shabi (Shalom Michaelshvili), who is dealing with a bitter divorce while pushing his son Oz (Itamar Pinto) to testify against his mother. His daughter Liri (Noa Cohen) has recently moved to a Kibbutz to live with her boyfriend Matan (Nevo Katan), whose parents Katya (Lena Fraifeld) and Gadi (Lior Miller) are going through a break-up of their own. There are others: one half of a lesbian couple is terrified to tell her mother she’s queer, while another couple prepares for a move to Europe.
Our Loves – which was filmed at Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the sites of the massacre, and in central Israel where the filmmakers restaged part of the Nova festival – takes place over three days, culminating on the day of the pogrom itself.
There is certainly a way to effectively convey the horrors of October 7 on film. There have already been a number of documentaries and miniseries attempting to reckon with the atrocities. Last year, TIFF premiered The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue which went on to win the People’s Choice Award for Best Documentary. I do not expect such accolades to be bestowed upon Our Loves.
Our Loves is inspired by real testimony and interviews with survivors. It’s a noble idea, but its execution is clumsy and overwrought. Real life brings plenty of stranger-than-fiction moments, but translating those to screen can feel inauthentic. For example, Sapir (Daniel Gimpel), a religious woman brought to the Nova festival by her secular friend after a breakup, ominously says “God’s going to punish me”. Moments later, gunfire breaks out. This may have actually happened, but on screen it feels hokey and overwritten. That’s hardly the feeling you want to achieve when dealing with such distressing subject matter. It is a consistent issue throughout the film: there is power in letting moments speak for themselves, but the film is keen to speak over what should be hugely impactful scenes.
Still, there are flashes of great interest. Several characters express fury over the lack of government preparedness. Moments of incredible bravery and heartbreak shine through. Tears will be shed. Yet Our Loves suffers under the weight of its own ambitions. Attempts at fashioning romance among the tragedy never take off.
Its ensemble is too disparate and underdeveloped. This is a film that is frustratingly visually unambitious in a way that feels unworthy of its devastating subject.
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