Whatever your take on it, the 7th October, 2023 changed the course of history. The firestorm now engulfing the Middle East and world opinion was a reaction to a spasm of unimaginable violence experienced by a relatively small group of fairly untypical Israelis.
The targets chosen by Hamas were mainly Israeli kibbutzes - historically left-wing co-operative communities - a few minutes’ drive from the defensive wall behind which 2.3 million Palestinians endured the twin burdens of the Israeli blockade and the tyranny of Hamas.
The events of 7th October are documented from many angles, by extensive security camera footage, phone video, Whatsapp messages and calls. The most shocking recordings are those made by Hamas gunmen who strap GoPro cameras to their heads and begin recording while still in Gaza, videoing the atrocities and often their own death from an Israeli defender’s bullet.
Who were these young men? What motivated them to commit such depraved acts? Using forensic OSINT techniques this film reveals as much as possible about their history and their lives in Gaza in the months before the attack.
At the heart of the film, however, is testimony from a thoughtfully-chosen cast of survivors from the hardest-hit single community in Israel that day, which suffered 100 dead and 50 kidnapped: Kibbutz Be’eri.
Be’eri’s giant printing presses are where Israeli driving licences are made, its art gallery, where the Hamas gunmen corralled hostages before abducting them to Gaza, skewed towards the avant-garde. It is Israel’s most successful and prosperous kibbutz, founded in 1946 but still organised according to the original co-operativist kibbutz ideals.
Combining insightful testimony with extraordinary video and audio material One Day in October will create a powerful, authentic and intensely personal narrative of that fateful day through the eyes of families who survived the assault on Kibbutz Be’eri.
But this will be more than a straight account of a deliberate, close-quarters massacre of the children, women and men of the kibbutz. Our aim is to elicit from our thoughtful, politically diverse cast a series of insights drawn from their experience of life in what many describe as a sort of paradise, but one which was uncomfortably close to the Gaza wall and the pent-up people it contained.
From the award-winning AMOS PICTURES (Leaving Neverland, I Am Andrew Tate, Four Hours At The Capitol, Escape From Kabul)