\n\tThe Palestinian-Israeli conflict rippled through the Toronto International Film Festival in surprising, disruptive and important\u00a0ways Wednesday as a once-canceled film about Oct. 7 made its splashy premiere to nearly 2,000 ticketbuyers amid a small but intense group of protesters.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film at the center of the tumult, Barry Avrich<\/a>\u2018s\u00a0The Road Between Us<\/a>, is a largely human-centric and apolitical affair, focusing on one Israeli grandfather\u2019s attempt to rescue his family trapped in a Hamas-occupied kibbutz on that fateful day. The grandfather, an even-keeled retired Israeli general named Noam Tibon<\/a>, recreates the harrowing journey he took as he faced heavy fire and rescued numerous civilians from a murderous fate on the way to his son, daughter-in-law and two toddler granddaughters in the besieged Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Gaza<\/a> border.<\/p>\n \n\tThe film culminates as he reaches those granddaughters, who\u2019d been sheltering quietly in a safe room in their home for more than eight hours as terrorists shot at them just outside. \u201cGrandpa\u2019s here!\u201d the 3-year-old exclaimed as Tibon reached the room and secured the area.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFamily is the most important thing we\u2019ve got,\u201d Noam Tibon told the audience after the screening. \u201cThis is worldwide.\u201d Earlier, he\u2019d told<\/a> The Hollywood Reporter that he had been racked by doubt as he navigated numerous gun battles to reach the kibbutz. \u201cI kept thinking \u2018what if I get there and they\u2019re all dead?\u2019\u201d Tibon said. \u201cBut then I had to push the thought out of my mind because I wouldn\u2019t have been able to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTibon\u2019s wife Gali, who accompanied her husband on most of the journey, offered her own incredulity at what occurred. \u201cTwo years after Oct. 7, I still don\u2019t believe it happened to us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are so joyful our family made it through but our hearts are with the families that are grieving.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor much of the screening and its aftermath, rousing cheers and heartfelt sniffles could be heard as Tibon and his wife went along on their dangerous and at times tragic solo mission; if one were not aware of the context, it would seem like one of so many crowd pleasing stories of heroism that play among doc and narrative films at this large festival every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut that context made everything more fraught. The audience welcomed the subjects to the stage after the screening with a nearly three-minute standing ovation, with many in the audience of 1,800 that packed the festival\u2019s premiere Roy Thomson Hall vocally pro-Israel, if eminently divided on current Israeli policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFestival organizers opted to give the proceedings a wider lens \u2014 and, perhaps, a counterbalance \u2014 by bringing on former CTV chief anchor Lisa LaFlamme to moderate a post-screening panel with filmmakers and subjects. LaFlamme\u2019s presence did not go over so well, however, particularly during a moment where she noted that \u201cIsrael\u2019s response has an aspect of revenge because of the humiliation of that day\u201d and cited the \u201coverwhelming use of force and over 64,000 estimated Palestinian deaths.\u201d\u00a0Loud jeers rained down from various sections of the theater; one festgoer\u00a0could be heard saying, \u201cYou\u2019re not here to litigate the war.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBefore the screening, TIFF<\/a> CEO Cameron Bailey apologized to the audience for how the whole screening situation was initially handled, continuing comments he made to The Globe and Mail earlier in the week that the situation is \u201csomething that I know caused a lot of pain and hurt in the Jewish community in particular, and I apologize for that. \u2026 We worked quickly to resolve things with Barry and his team and were able to come to a resolution. But in that time a lot of harm had been done, and a lot of misinformation was out there.\u201d The movie was invited, disinvited and eventually reinstated after a widespread outcry over the course of about a week last month.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tIn the end, the film had been given only one screening slot, contrary to TIFF custom of at least two public screenings and one press screening. Organizers have not explained the decision, but given the protests<\/a> and the scale of security, it became a little clearer why they might want one big event instead of the handful of smaller ones that attend most documentaries. Avrich, who had previously told THR he was unhappy with the decision to reduce the number of screenings, sought a more diplomatic path Wednesday.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhat a screening. Other films at TIFF might have had certain privileges. But I\u2019m in Roy Thomson Hall\u2026 we arrived here today and we will release this film internationally,\u201d he said to loud cheers, even suggesting the venue be renamed \u201cThe Tibon Theatre\u201d for the day. The film is seeking distribution, which means, for the moment, this was the only audience that can see it.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore the screening, nearly 2,000 people lined up to gain entry to the venue, the line snaking in fairly ordered fashion up the smaller Simcoe Street, where the theater is located, and around the corner for blocks down the main King Street thoroughfare; some ticketbuyers carried Israeli flags or wore yellow hostage ribbons.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tGathered on Simcoe were several dozen pro-Palestinian protesters who called out anti-IDF messages and accused Israel of genocide, with a scattering of pro-Israel protesters loudly volleying back. At least one pro-Palestinian protester was led away\u00a0in handcuffs by police, after violating a kind of DMZ between the two groups, in a tableau that seemed at once bound up with and entirely separate from the festival. (For more on the protest, see THR\u2019s coverage here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \n\tThe festival has been infused with geopolitical conflict in ways almost unprecedented in its 50 years, suggesting that nearly two years after the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated, public figures in Hollywood are both seized by passion on the issue and, in many cases, willing to use their platforms to give voice to them. The festival unfolded amid the pledge this week signed by Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and other Hollywood luminaries not to work with Israeli film institutions \u201cimplicated in genocide\u201d in Gaza, while Israeli film veterans have said<\/a> such a boycott harms the very people working for peace, as attendees heatedly debated the subject.<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition to Road, The festival is also screening several movies from the Palestinian perspective, including Annemarie Jacir\u2019s period drama Palestine 36 and the Venice Silver Lion winner The Voice of Hind Rajab, the trio in total forming the kind of diversity of viewpoints that can only be deemed controversial in these polarized, echo-chamber-y times. Meanwhile, on social media, a campaign has taken hold in pro-Israel circles for people to vote for Road for TIFF\u2019s influential audience award, in part to head off a victory from Palestine 36.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tBut the Tibons were less inclined to an us-vs-them mentality, complicating, among other things, the protesters\u2019 narrative that the screening amounted to some kind of endorsement of hawkishness.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe war on Gaza should have stopped a long time ago,\u201d Gali Tibon said quietly, to some if not full applause among the pro-Israel crowd inside the venue. \u201cI hope it\u2019s not too late. We could still end the war and bring the hostages back and bring peace upon the region.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe said that on \u201cOn Oct. 6, 2023, there were kibbutzim filled with young families and children along the border. This will be the real victory of Israel. Not how many bombs we shelled. How many families will live on the border with their children.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNoam Tibon added, \u201c I hope my granddaughters will live in a flourishing Israel. A living country, a living democracy. Two years of war is a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Palestinian-Israeli conflict rippled through the Toronto International Film Festival in surprising, disruptive and important\u00a0ways Wednesday as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,91069,134,6898,92689,344,91070,17736,93164,18032],"class_list":["post-134830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barry-avrich","tag-entertainment","tag-gaza","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-movies","tag-noam-tibon","tag-protests","tag-the-road-between-us","tag-tiff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}