Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s strand in which, each fortnight, we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films breaking out in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track… So, we’re going to do the hard work for you.
Avi Nesher‘s Our Loves has taken off at the Israeli box office and Gersh is now taking it out to the U.S. The movie is set during October 7 – an event that changed the face of modern Israel – but Nesher tells us it is very much not an “October 7 movie.” Instead, he sees Our Loves as a piece about ordinary people in the face of adversity.
Name: Our Loves
Country: Israel
Producers: United King Films, Sipur Studios, Fox Entertainment Studios, Access Entertainment, Moriah Media, Artomas Communications
Distributors: Gersh (U.S.), Other Angle Pictures (international)
For fans of: Image of Victory, Rage and Glory
Watch on Deadline
There have been a slew of documentaries and TV dramas about the October 7 massacre since that tragic day three years ago, but experienced Israeli director Avi Nesher wanted to do something different with Our Loves.
The inception of his movie, which has just broken records at the Israeli box office, in fact dates back five years prior to a devastating tragedy that befell Nesher and his wife, when their teenage son was killed in a hit-and-run.
“Nietzsche said, ‘You look into the abyss, but the abyss looks back at you,’” Nesher tells Deadline. “You can succumb to it and do nothing, or you can try to find a new way. I’ve always thought it was interesting to bring characters to the brink and see what they do there.”
So while Our Loves takes place in Israel on October 6 and 7, 2023, and it is very much rooted in these events, Nesher explains how the feature that received a standing ovation when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is very much not an “October 7 movie.”
“One cannot make a definitive work about [October 7],” he adds. “This is a movie about ordinary people, not heroes or people with great expertise. The image of the abyss, and the temptation to let go and give in to it, came out of that. I’ve made a number of movies about ordinary people facing history, so I think Israelis pretty much knew what I was trying to do.”
Starring well-known Israeli actors like Hadas Yaron, Evelin Hagoel and Noa Cohen, the movie follows a group of ordinary men and women whose lives become unknowingly intertwined. Each is trapped in an unusual and failing relationship, with circumstances that are at times painful and at times comic. As their individual stories unfold through twists and turns, their private struggles are transformed by the events of that fateful day as a Hamas-led militia attacks the country.
While trying to tell a universal story of “ordinary people,” Nesher acknowledges that the spectre of October 7 hung over filming. A number of people who were at the Nova Music Festival, where many Israelis were killed or kidnapped, worked on the movie and all the characters in the film are based on real people, who had their names changed.
“We knew we would have to face the memories of what happened that day,” says Nesher, whose previous work includes Hollywood movies like Drew Barrymore-starrer Doppelganger, and Israeli films such as Rage and Glory and Image of Victory. “I talked to the people who had been at Nova and asked, ‘Do you really think you can go through this?’ They said, ‘The only way we’re going to heal is by facing it.’”
The resuling film proved to be something of a healer for Nesher and co, and it has some seriously impressive backers.
Producers behind the two-hour movie include Fox Entertainment Studios, The Zone of Interest outfit Access Entertainment and We Will Dance Again maker Sipur Studios, while Gersh is handling U.S. sales. Some of these backers boarded in post-production after watching rough cuts and Nesher says they made the score and sound mix “much more elaborate” than could otherwise have been afforded.
“For many of the people involved, it was truly a labor of love and a story that needed to be told, because there was a sense that [others] were distorting the story [of October 7] and taking it away from what really happened,” adds Nesher.
The movie premiered at TIFF, where Nesher says the team received a warm standing ovation from a mostly non-Jewish audience that left him “literally crying” on stage. “This wasn’t a typical movie-making experience,” he adds.
While Nesher jokes that “very few villas have been built on the earnings of an Israeli movie,” Our Loves nevertheless launched last month to the biggest opening for an Israeli drama in the past decade, according to local figures, while its team tell us it has now topped 180,000 admissions.
Gersh is selling Our Loves in the U.S. and Nesher says the film’s many backers “really want people to see this movie,” which “offers a different perspective on what ordinary Israelis are like.”
Welcoming Israeli creatives back into the fold
Amit Yasur
Whether about October 7 or not, selling Israeli shows and movies around the world over the past three years has been tough, while a pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people” has been signed by huge stars.
Nesher says all of this “brings up very sad memories for me,” especially for someone who, like many of his fellow Israeli filmmakers, does not condone the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. “I’ve heard of people who made really good movies that weren’t accepted into festivals because they were Israeli,” he adds. “I haven’t experienced any of that directly myself. I know it exists, and I know that for Israelis it feels like an insult added to injury: Something horrible happened, and somehow we became the villains.”
As the midterm Republican defeats place Donald Trump in a perilous position, a shift in Israeli politics could also soon be on the horizon. The result of last month’s Israeli election is still being ironed out, but Netanyahu’s bloc failed to get a majority and his main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, has now been asked to form a government.
While he “doesn’t really like to speculate,” Nesher feels this could forge a “restart” that may see Israeli creatives welcomed back into the international fold.
He harks back to that packed TIFF screening room and the roar of emotion he felt that day.
“Maybe the standing ovation had something to do with reconsidering what people thought [of Israelis],” he adds. “Perhaps there’s a sense that things have gone too far.”
