The Paramount+ documentary “We Will Dance Again” provides viewers with an uncensored, 360-view of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel that left 405 concertgoers dead, 45 taken hostage and many more injured. The graphic depiction of the day gives a full glimpse into the terror inflicted on innocent Israeli civilians, international visitors (including several Americans), Nova Music Festival-goers and more.
Produced by See It Now Studios, the film debuted on the streamer Tuesday, almost a year after the atrocities that sparked the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Using Hamas’ GoPro film recordings, social media videos and victims’ recovered cell phone footage, the documentarian team behind “We Will Dance Again” attempted to give a total picture of what really happened.
Speaking at a Los Angeles screening at the Sherry Lansing Theatre on Thursday, the film’s director Yariv Mozer (“Golda’s War Diaries”) defended the graphic nature of the documentary as being necessary and impactful. (Emilio Schencker, an Israeli filmmaker and CEO of entertainment studio SIPUR, warned ahead of the screening that the film was not an easy watch.)
“There was this tension during the whole process, and I think it was a good tension, between me and the producers. I wanted to show more. I wanted to take off all the blurs. I wanted everything to be clear,” Mozer said during a post-screening panel. “But it was clear we wanted it to be a commercial film that will address people on mainstream channels.”
Ultimately, the documentary team decided to blur victims’ faces, but while showcasing the atrocities committed by Hamas, the footage gathered by Mozer does not shy from showing the sheer brutality, filming victims often laying in pools of their own blood or limp over their cars’ steering wheels. Others during the attack are shown hiding in bomb shelters, tanks and refrigerators — or running for their lives through open fields.
Over two dozen survivors participated in the Paramount+ documentary to highlight not only their stories but those of their friends, who did not survive the day’s events. “We Will Dance Again” relies heavily on testimonies from the survivors, but the raw footage of the attacks became the film’s most effective element.
Susan Zirinsky, the film’s producer and former president of CBS News, said there were several “arguments” over how much to portray the truest account of the day’s atrocities but still make it palatable for audiences to view.
“Do we show somebody getting shot? Do we take that gunman going up to the person and then [pull] away, and then go back so that you know that person has been shot?” Zirinsky said during the panel, which also featured an Israeli survivor named Eitan.
The film pushed the envelope, ultimately deciding that depicting the day in its totality was imperative.
“I felt that you show and you see it, but you have to allow people the opportunity to stay with it, because people can get frightened or squeamish,” Zirinsky said. “I was the hesitant person, but in the end, I was the advocate.”
“That’s the price. You leave some of the things that you feel that are too much outside of the film, and I must say eventually that I think it’s a good thing,” Mozer added.
Zirinsky also revealed that there are different versions of the film: a British version that will air on the BBC, an Israeli version and the Paramount+ version. A German network, RTL, will also air the film in full with no commercials – the first film to do so on the network since “Schindler’s List.” The team behind “We Will Dance Again” decided that premiering on a streamer in the U.S. allowed for a “freedom to expose more” than what is possible on a network; however, Zirinsky hinted “never say never” to it airing elsewhere.
“George Cheeks [co-CEO of Paramount Global] felt this was our mission. Shari Redstone [chairwoman of Paramount Global] was there all the way. President of CBS entertainment Amy Reisenbach also in our corner. You cannot lose with that team,” she said of the network executives’ support of the film.
For Mozer, he said he was struck by the youth and innocence of those in attendance at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7. Mozer wanted to tell a new generation’s story and highlight those “young people, beautiful, innocent who came to celebrate the beautiful values of life, freedom, peace.” He chose not to include the rescuers, Israeli police or the families of victims or survivors in the film, rather focusing on the lives lost and survivors’ testimonies.
Eitan, whose story featured prominently in the film, also spoke at the L.A. screening. Alongside a group of around 20 others, he hid in a bomb shelter and threw out live grenades in order to save himself and others that were already injured, including his friend, the late Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
“Seeing Hersh there, helpless with nothing. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just came to enjoy himself at a party, and he found himself very badly injured, with his best friend killed right next to him, and I had no other choice but to try to save the people that were in there,” Eitan said.
Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage by the Hamas militants on Oct. 7, one of 45 who crossed the border back into Gaza. After his death was confirmed Sept. 1, Mozer returned to the editing room, disheartened: “It’s not what I expected to do.”
But the filmmaker reiterated that the documentary is “unpolitical.” He was critical of the Israeli police for a slow response time – nearly six hours – and acknowledged that a group is actively suing Israeli security over the lack of urgency.
“We Will Dance Again” premieres Tuesday, Sept. 24, on Paramount+.
