By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
One month before it was set to be screened at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), October 7 documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue was pulled from the festival’s lineup. Two days later, after filmmakers negotiated with the festival, the decision was reversed and the festival announced that they would show the film.
It should never have been controversial. The Road Between Us documents the journey of retired Israel Defense Forces General Noam Tibon from Tel Aviv to Kibbutz Nahal Oz to save his son’s family on October 7. It’s not about the war in Gaza or the history of the region. It’s one man’s story of bravery and heroism in the midst of a massacre. Yet, the incident seemingly falls into a predictable category, one where institutions attempt to marginalize and silence Jewish and Israeli voices for nothing more than being Jewish or Israeli.
But this case was different because of the excuse TIFF gave for initially pulling the film. “The invitation for the Canadian documentary film The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue was withdrawn by TIFF because general requirements for inclusion in the festival, and conditions that were requested when the film was initially invited, were not met, including legal clearance of all footage,” a spokesperson from the festival told Deadline. “The purpose of the requested conditions was to protect TIFF from legal implications and to allow TIFF to manage and mitigate anticipated and known risks around the screening of a film about highly sensitive subject matter, including potential threat of significant disruption.”
TIFF, by referencing the “legal clearance of footage,” seemed to be implying that, because the documentary made use of Hamas footage from October 7, the filmmakers had to get permission to use it. Hamas in some way owned that footage.
This is an absurd legal claim. “The topic of creators’ rights is something I work with regularly,” Talia Harris Ram, line producer on The Road Between Us, told Israel’s Channel 12. “There’s no legal problem with showing these clips, which were already streamed live on October 7. From an intellectual property standpoint, they are clearly in the public domain.”
TIFF clearly understood this from the get-go, as is proven through the fact that the film was quickly re-invited to the festival. TIFF wasn’t really afraid of legal action on the part of Hamas. Much more likely is that TIFF was afraid not of Hamas but of the backlash they would (and now certainly will) receive for screening the film. But they needed a less political excuse, so “legal clearance” became the scapegoat.
One detail of this whole saga sticks out. If TIFF indeed needed a neutral-sounding excuse to drop the film, and this is what they settled on, then they genuinely believed that implying that Hamas had ownership of October 7 footage was reasonable. They thought people would buy their claim. They thought they could pressure the filmmakers of The Road Between Us with that same excuse.
This speaks to a problem that isn’t just legal. TIFF’s statement warrants a discussion beyond “intellectual property” and “the public domain.” The festival’s choice of excuse speaks to a deep corruption of values that completely misunderstands the purpose of art and how it ought to be made.
In 1977, serial killer David Berkowitz — better known as the Son of Sam — was arrested for murdering six people and injuring 11 others in a notorious New York City shooting spree. Afterwards, he sought to publish a book about his crimes and make money off of it. Lawmakers in New York scrambled to prevent him from profiting off of his own murders, passing the Son of Sam law, which barred criminals from profiting off of their crimes in the form of books, television, movies or any sort of media deal.
The Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 1991 on the grounds of free speech, but the law was later amended. Today, almost every state has followed in New York’s lead and has some version of a Son of Sam law.
Constitutionality aside, the philosophical and sociological underpinnings of these laws are fascinating. They rightfully argue that art is not values-neutral. Books, television shows, films and the like exist in a milieu that is concerned with how they came to be and what they seek to communicate. When a criminal is paid to participate in the recounting of his own crimes, or when Hamas is credited or allowed to authorize the screening of its own atrocity footage, the piece of work produced is one that has awarded that criminal or terrorist ownership. It communicates that violent or criminal acts are valuable, worthy of payment and contributing something positive to a piece of work.
It is often necessary, especially for lawyers and criminologists, to understand and document the motivations, thoughts and feelings of criminals. But that doesn’t mean the criminal has been a positive creative force in the world who deserves the reward of monetary compensation or legal ownership. A firsthand account of a crime is not positive if you’re the one who committed it.
Good art ought to, in essence, be morally edifying or at the very least not morally degrading. But if in the process of creating art you are required to compensate or ask the permission of a criminal, you are signaling almost a gratitude to them, saying that without them, there would be no book or movie or television show. Obviously, if the crime hadn’t been committed, there would be no content created about it. But that doesn’t exactly mean it was good the crime happened in the first place.
When TIFF claimed Hamas had some ownership of the footage they took on October 7, they basically communicated the same thing that someone paying a criminal to contribute to a documentary or write a book communicates: “What you did has value. You are an important and positive part of this creative process.”
This is perpetrator-centered media. The criminal or the terrorist exists at the center of the creative process and is cherished. It’s a humiliating low to stoop to for any creative, let alone a prestigious film festival.
While TIFF’s behavior is an example of the exact wrong attitude, The Road Between Us is the perfect example of victim- and survivor-centered media. It decenters and deplatforms evil by instead telling the story of a man who fought and defeated it. This type of art can still acknowledge that evil had power at one point, like Hamas did on October 7, but the art should strive to take that power away. In ethical art that confronts the ugliness of the world, those who overcame it control the narrative, not the ugliness itself.
TIFF’s claim to need permission from Hamas is an attempt to put the evil and the ugly back in power. Moreover, it presents a morally neutral outlook on art. It, intentionally or unintentionally, communicates that art is just art, and the way it is made and the values it communicates are irrelevant. Entertainment is entertainment.
It is disappointing — but not surprising — to see in today’s morally bankrupt climate one of the world’s most renowned film festivals completely misunderstand the purpose and importance of art and the way it is made. The stories told are not just stories; they ought to mean something. The way they are told is part of this meaning; they can take bad and transform it into good, and they can teach us lessons and encourage us to be better.
But art and stories only hold this edifying power if we understand that they carry the moral weight of every decision made in their creation. There are true crime documentaries that seem to care more about the perspective of the killer than that of his victims and their families, and there are ones that center the victims and strip the killer of the power he had over them. These two types of media may appear the same, but they are not, and it takes a moral maturity to recognize the difference. If we cannot, we not only risk sacrificing the ethical power of films like The Road Between Us on the altar of artistic neutrality. We risk no longer making good art at all.
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