What caught Nim Shapira\u2019s eye when videos of New Yorkers tearing down posters of Israeli hostages began circulating in October 2023 wasn\u2019t just the stark affront. It was also the poles the posters had been attached to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI recognized every corner,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was my neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
The filmmaker had never before turned his craft to his identity as an Israeli living in New York. But Shapira immediately began gathering footage about the posters \u2014 and about those who felt compelled to put them up, and to tear them down.<\/p>\n
His resulting documentary, \u201cTorn,\u201d was first released last year<\/a>, when about 100 Israelis were still held hostage, out of roughly 250 taken on . Now, with all living hostages released and Hamas agreeing to free the bodies of 28 deceased hostages, too, Shapira \u2014 who is entering \u201cTorn\u201d into awards consideration \u2014 says its message remains deeply relevant.<\/p>\n We spoke to Shapira on Monday in the hours after 20 hostages were released about what he learned about the poster wars and why his film is still essential viewing.<\/p>\n Sign up here to attend a virtual screening of \u201cTorn\u201d on Thursday at 7 p.m.<\/a>, followed by a conversation with Shapira and others involved in the poster wars in New York City.<\/p>\n JTA: Before Oct. 7, your work did not focus on your Israeli identity. Why did you feel you had to make this movie?<\/p>\n Shapira: I\u2019ve always been vocal for peace. But then, Oct. 7 happened, and the people that were my friends stopped speaking to me because I\u2019m Israeli. It\u2019s like the old saying of: You are the people you\u2019ve been waiting for. I just had to do it. I didn\u2019t want to do this film, and I had to do it.<\/p>\n What did you learn about the people who were tearing down the posters? Were there moments where you felt like you understood what they were thinking?<\/p>\n That\u2019s what I wanted to explore in the film. I don\u2019t justify what they did, and I don\u2019t respect it, but this is a documentary. It\u2019s asking questions. It\u2019s not a film funded by this organization or that organization, or this country, or that country. I\u2019m asking for empathy, and if I\u2019m asking for empathy, I should also have empathy for the other side, and I should also understand their motives.<\/p>\n I would say that the people that tore down the posters live on a spectrum. These were people from in their teens to people that are retired, every ethnicity, every background and every age group. And that\u2019s what strikes me the most. There were so many people without skin in the game that joined this cause of taking down these posters.<\/p>\n Some people that tore down the posters did lose family members in Gaza because of Israeli airstrikes. Some people that tore down the posters \u2014 they didn\u2019t read what was on the signs. They were told that this is Israeli propaganda funded by the government, and they thought that it needs to be removed. Some of them are college students that thought it was the cool thing to do. And some are antisemites.<\/p>\n So I don\u2019t want to put a label on the entire group of people that turned out the posters, because there are different scenarios in which posters were torn. In any case, this was an attack on freedom of speech, and this was anti-American. And there are enough lampposts in New York to share their suffering as well.<\/p>\n What do you hope viewers will take away from seeing \u201cTorn\u201d?<\/p>\n Empathy is all about putting yourself in someone else\u2019s shoes. I honestly don\u2019t think that people can put themselves in other people\u2019s shoes, because you can never know what another person is going through, but you can step outside of your own shoes for a quick moment. So that\u2019s all I\u2019m asking.<\/p>\n I\u2019m asking for the people who put on the posters to think about these victims and hostages that did nothing wrong. And I\u2019m also asking for understanding from, let\u2019s say, my side, to understand that the number-one reason why people read down the posters is that the death toll in Gaza kept rising throughout this war.<\/p>\n What has been most surprising about the reception?<\/p>\n I was able to have a film screened in Ivy League universities from Columbia to Harvard to Stanford to NYU. I\u2019m very proud of that. I\u2019m very proud that some of the screenings had people from the encampments. I spoke with American Muslims. I spoke with people from Jordan and from Egypt. I also spoke with Chinese and Venezuelans \u2014 I spoke to everyone who came to the screenings. I think maybe the most surprising thing was that there was a Q&A that I couldn\u2019t come to \u2014 people just stayed in the theater and talked until the usher told them to leave.<\/p>\n Now there are good reasons to remove hostage posters \u2014\u00a0all of the living hostages are home. Why is your movie still worth seeing?<\/p>\n For two reasons. First, the hostage families with their loved ones still in Gaza \u2014 they are asking for us to stay in the fight. They still need us.<\/p>\n These hostages that were murdered, first kidnapped and then murdered \u2014 they are not just Israeli. They are American, and they are also from Nepal, Thailand and Tanzania. They are Christian and Muslim and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews. People from all religions are captive right now because their only sin was to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and their families deserve to bring them home for a proper burial.<\/p>\n But also, my film is not about Israel or Palestine. My film is about New York and America. I\u2019m dying for the day that the film will not be irrelevant, but we are more tribal and polarized than ever. We exist in different echo chambers and different silos. The poster war did not just tear down the posters, but also tore down the social fabric of the city. We are the most diverse city on the planet, so if we can\u2019t sit down and talk to one another, what are we doing here? We have the biggest Jewish population. We have a huge Muslim population. Antisemitism is at a record high; there\u2019s also Islamophobia that is rising.<\/p>\n But these are not just problems for the Jews or the Muslims. This is a societal problem and the film mostly asks questions. It asks: Can multiple things be true at the same time? Why is empathy a limited resource, and can we have disagreements without dehumanizations? So yes, the film is still much more relevant than ever.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The post With hostages home, the filmmaker behind \u2018Torn\u2019 says his documentary about NYC\u2019s poster wars remains sadly relevant<\/a> appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What caught Nim Shapira\u2019s eye when videos of New Yorkers tearing down posters of Israeli hostages began circulating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2594,662,2592,2599,61,2595,2598,2597,2601,9,11,10,663,2593,2596,2602,2600],"class_list":["post-2073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-arab-israeli-conflict","tag-gaza-strip","tag-gaza-israel-conflict","tag-hamas-attacks","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-israel-palestine-relations","tag-israeli-attacks-against-the-gaza-strip","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-jews-and-judaism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-palestine","tag-politics-of-israel","tag-politics-of-palestine","tag-politics-of-palestine-region","tag-politics-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}