At the present moment, for pro-Palestinian campaigners, mention of the hostages and victims of Hamas’s 7 October attacks tends to be greeted with indifference, or even contempt. And yet this powerful and complex documentary, directed by Brandon Kramer (a distant relative of some of the people involved) and co-produced by Darren Aronofsky, is a reminder that the situation now can’t be understood without remembering the Hamas massacre – how it was calculated to provoke a rage-filled reaction that would discredit Israel internationally, what it meant and continues to mean within Israel and how the political and ideological connotations of the hostages have themselves evolved.
At first, the hostages’ images were widely seen as a focus for outrage and a casus belli. Posters put up in cities showing the hostages were ripped down - to the fury of their families. But now the hostages’ images are associated more with anti-Netanyahu, anti-war-at-all-costs sentiment, with the families demanding real negotiating progress in getting them home.
