We Will Dance Again: Yariv Mozer’s Harrowing Documentary of Oct. 7 Nova Music Fest Massacre

The bloodiest day in Israel’s history is captured in the first documentary to compile cell phone footage of the mass murder of festival attendees by Hamas militants.

Susan Zirinsky, Yariv Mozer and Eitan speak onstage during a NYC Special Screening Event of 'We Will Dance Again' at Temple Emanu-El on Sept. 18, 2024, in New York City. — Susan Zirinsky, Yariv Mozer and Eitan speak onstage during Special Screening Event of ‘We Will Dance Again’ at Temple Emanu-El on Sept. 18, 2024, in NYC. Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Paramount+

Some of the raw footage of the mass murder and abductions was seen scattered in news reports and social media. But what was shown to the public last year was brief for obvious reasons. The footage was captured via cell phones of festivalgoers of the Nova Music Festival, or through CCTV footage outside roadside fallout shelters or dashcam video before their abrupt endings, when over 400 music lovers were murdered or kidnapped.

We Will Dance Again, on Paramount+ on Sept. 24, is director Yariv Mozer’s chronicle of the events seen by the victims on Oct. 7.

The 3,500 attendees at the open-air music festival in the desert emerged from a night of drugs, dancing and trance music to see rockets across the sky, only to slowly realize they were sitting ducks in what would become a killing field.

Mozer got cell phone footage recorded by festival attendees as they fled for their lives, along with halfway-point surprise of the inclusion of footage from Hamas’ GoPro cameras strapped to its militant fighters.

With this footage, he has created a document of images from both sides of the horror that begat the Israel-Hamas War still going on today.

Mozer tells the Nova massacre story as action thriller, interviewing dozen survivors of the attack–all in their 20s — to detail their fear, pain and their hopes for the future.

When screening the film at a Manhattan Temple, Mozer explained his early decision to angle the film on a youthful group of survivors. “They are so beautiful, young in spirit. Naive, in a way,” the director told the crowd gathered at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center on the Upper East Side. “They came with all their innocence to this party for love and peace and freedom. And then they faced the most evil humanity could bring on that day.”

As the horror unfolds, viewers hide inside a fridge with one woman, selfie footage filming her terror as Hamas militants stalk the festival grounds and fire their AK-47s; see cell phone video taken by fleeing festivalgoers, some who share that they were still high on acid or ecstasy from the night before; catch glimpses in festivalgoers’ footage, as they flee in terror, of others being picked off by bullets.

Many bodies are seen lining the road after a traffic jam becomes a line of easy targets as Hamas militants rushed in.

A smiling Shani Louk, dancing and enjoying the festival, is seen here, hours before militants took her into Gaza. Hamas footage from that day shows Louk unconscious on a truck and on Oct. 31, she was declared dead when a bone fragment from her skull was found.

Later, an extended sequence of CCTV footage captures the remarkable bravery when Aner Shapira expelled Hamas grenades, seven in total, from a fallout shelter housing terrified festivalgoers. He died when one exploded and also blew off the lower arm of American Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was then taken hostage. Goldberg-Polin’s body was discovered by Israeli Defense Forces in August, days after his parents pleaded for his return at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Mozer’s film puts this unimaginable moment of his life and many other harrowing, cruel moments of terrible loss and incredible bravery, on the record.

His subjects articulate the dead-eyed fear and deep confusion they cannot shake about what happened to them that day; the emotional spectrum stretches from shell-shocked to rage-filled to affable to ashamed.

Mozer seeks to find some hope in all of the death and shattered lives, but that’s a hard sell for him to close in the documentary’s final moments. Some key questions go uninterrogated in We Will Dance Again.

It took the IDF six hours to respond as so many calls for help were made by these young people, screaming into their phones while fleeing Hamas bullets or hiding in garbage bins and bushes. Mozer opts not to get into the refusal by Israel to launch an investigation.

He has no idea how a collaborator on his film acquired the Hamas footage that creates the film’s wild reverse shot on the situation. Mozer says that this delay in rescue teams was due to the difficulty of mobilizing young soldiers “scattered all over the country” on a day of Shabbat, but conceded there are “still questions that we are waiting to be answered.”

We Will Dance Again premieres Sept. 24 on Paramount+.

We Will Dance Again: Yariv Mozer’s Harrowing Documentary of Oct. 7 Nova Music Fest Massacre

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