Yariv Mozer’s new documentary, “We Will Dance Again,” detailing Hamas’ brutal attack at the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, is both heartbreaking and horrifying, confronting the harrowing events of that day without hesitation.
Streaming on Paramount+, the film follows multiple survivors of the Nova festival as they recount their experiences from that tragic day. They share the stories of their friends who didn’t survive and those still being held hostage in Gaza.
Featuring survivor testimonies, festival footage, and disturbing videos taken by Hamas during the massacre, “We Will Dance Again” reveals the full scale of the tragedy, with over 380 people killed and some still in captivity.
In an interview with Unpacked, Mozer discussed his motivation for making the documentary, emphasizing why the Nova festival deaths should not be viewed through a political lens and why it is crucial for the world to see this footage.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Why initially was the Nova festival a story that you wanted to tell?
So on the day of the seventh of October, I wanted, as a documentary filmmaker, to be as close as possible to the events and to find a way to do a documentary about what happened. The Israeli documentary channel suggested the story of the party as something that will be the most non-political part of that horrific day. You have kids coming to a party to celebrate love, peace, and freedom, and find themselves in the midst of this enormous terror attack. For me, it’s the most innocent part of the whole catastrophe that happened on that day, and I wanted to shed light and bring the truth of what happened in this massacre.
At this point, the Nova festival has been publicized so widely on the news, there have been museum exhibits across the United States. Why did you think that documentary filmmaking would be the best medium to tell the story?
In a documentary film, you can identify with the characters, with the people who came to Nova and survived this massacre. They are sharing their own point of view, and opening their hearts, bravely bringing their own experience so people can feel them, and be with them. That is the experience that documentary film can bring. No other thing can be as same as a documentary. In a 90-minute, feature-length documentary you go all the way through the process of events and you join this horrific journey with people who you can identify with emotionally.
The documentary doesn’t shield the viewer from violence. There’s been a lot of debate about what to do with the footage of victims’ bodies. Why did you decide to include those clips?
The atrocities are there for us to deal with, to understand the truth of what happened, especially when people are trying to deny and build up conspiracies and trying to say that these events didn’t happen.
Hamas was keen to capture those moments of atrocity on their own cameras, and shared some of it with the world. Those of us who want to understand what happened and understand what the survivors had to go through need to be able to experience and deal with it and cope with those images. We cannot avoid it, and I think that the film is doing that in a proper way. I did leave behind some of the worst things that I’ve seen, just to tell you how horrific what was captured was.
More on painting the picture of truth and educating people, you’ve mentioned that you don’t see the film as political. Yet many people wouldn’t watch your documentary simply because the events happened in Israel. Do you have anything you want to tell those people?
Blaming Israel on October 7 is being ignorant and in a way, very evil. How could you blame those kids coming to dance for peace, love, and freedom and finding themselves in the most horrific terror attack in the hands of these murderers who didn’t differentiate between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, who came from all over the world to celebrate life? Hamas was there to celebrate death.
You can see it in your own eyes. It has nothing to do with politics, the documentary is evidence. It has no narration, no interpretation. It’s just placing the facts in front of people to see where it all began: What was the starting point of where we are today?
For people ignoring October 7, they need to ask themselves serious questions about themselves, about Western society being under threat of people like Hamas, of terror organizations and groups like Hamas that were shouting “jihad, jihad.” This wasn’t a war against Israel. This was a war against Western values.
The documentary pretty much ends when survivors are evacuated from Nova. Why did you decide to not go into depth about the hostage situation and the war that has followed?
I don’t think that the film can capture everything. I think that my choice was to tell the story of the Nova music festival and the massacre that happened on that specific day, the seventh of October. Of course, we did shed light on the struggle of those survivors to continue their lives and their hope to one day dance again, but we can’t tell the entire story.
Much of your filmmaking deals with the past and talking about Israeli history. This is a story that continues to evolve day by day. Was your approach to making this documentary different from your previous films?
As you were saying, This is a story that still is happening. There are still hostages in Gaza, and I would like to see them free and back home. One of them is a character in the film. Another one was murdered just a few weeks ago. This is very different from the films I did, which were on past events and history. I consider this as something very present.
It’s part of my identity. Every film that I did is another layer of my complicated identity as being Israeli, Jewish, gay, and the third generation of Holocaust survivors. Every film that I did sheds light on something else that is part of me.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of the Nova massacre, what do you hope that viewers of your documentary gain from watching it?
They should understand what Israel is facing and what Hamas is. They should understand what the true nature of Hamas is, with the understanding that there is a big difference between the Palestinian people and Hamas as their leadership.
I think that the Palestinian people are victims of their own leadership, victims of Hamas, of the brutality of Hamas, of the way that Hamas doesn’t see any hope for the future, any point of coexistence with Israel and the Jewish people. All Hamas sees in front of their eyes is the complete destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, of the Jewish people, and of Western society. This is something that we cannot accept, and in the long run, I do hope that the Palestinian people will be able to get rid of Hamas for themselves.
Is there anything you think our readers should know about you, the film, and your experience making it?
I want your readers to come and watch the film for the sake of those who survived this festival. Nova survivors are your age, they are all Gen Z.
They came to celebrate and dance at a festival that could have taken place in any other place in the world. It was a collaboration with a big Brazilian festival called Universo Paralello, which happened to choose Israel as its next destination. So I hope they will watch the film through the eyes of the survivors and just imagine themselves being in the same situation.
