We Will Dance Again, a Paramount+ documentary about the Hamas militants’ mass killing and hostage-taking of music festival attendees in southern Israel–part of a larger attack that triggered the ongoing Gaza war — debuted ahead of the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre.

No exaggeration, no embellishment

Director Yariv Mozer’s immersive approach elides commentary. Instead, he sticks to harrowing testimony from survivors, buttressed by graphically violent video taken in real time, including footage retrieved from the assailants. “It’s events happening in front of your eyes,” says producer Susan Zirinsky, who’s the former head of CBS News. “There is no exaggeration, no embellishment.”

Genesis of the project?

On the 7th of October, I was sitting in my apartment in Tel Aviv. I thought, “What’s my responsibility, my duty as a documentary filmmaker? Where should I be?” It took two days before I was able to get to the South, to witness the Nova festival site with my own eyes. It was truly like nothing I’d seen in my life. People were still looking for personal belongings. The smell was awful. It was the starting point.

It began as a collaboration with the Israeli documentary channel, Hot8. Then MGM joined, through Fulwell 73. Then when Susan Zirinsky came aboard, Paramount+ signed on.

Documentary viewed through strictly polarized ideological lenses?

I am concerned. The film isn’t political. It’s told from the eyes of the survivors and from the eyes of Hamas. There is one truth about what happened.

Buyers reservations about the film?

I was pitching this to several other U.S. streaming platforms and what I was told is that they’re afraid of touching this subject matter, the 7th of October, because of concerns about the political situation.

International distribution?

The film was sold to Australia, to Spain. Hot8 will show it in Israel.

Then, the BBC, the version they’ll air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists. It was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities and decide if this is a terrorist organization or not.

Narrative is filled with violent footage

It was a constant discussion [among the creative team]. I was in favor of showing more. I wanted to keep as much as possible, to be able to show how enormous the scale of this attack was and the brutality of these atrocities against people who couldn’t defend themselves.

Others were on the side of what viewers would think, or what viewers could cope with. And that was a good thing, that input. It was a healthy process.

There’s little mention of Hamas militants’ sexual violence

We had a lot of discussions of what would happen to the film if you have testimony like this — audio-visual testimony of the sexual violence that happened. Would we lose audiences on streaming platforms? Eventually we thought it would be too much.

We show festivalgoer Shani Louk’s dead body on a Hamas truck in Gaza, and we see the way those people are treating it. I think that [footage], you can’t stop thinking of what she went through. Sometimes you let the viewer think by themselves on what those people had to go through. Sometimes you don’t speak to these things directly.

My family survived the Holocaust. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Holocaust. It’s why we decided to close the film by saying the 7th of October was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Your previous projects focused on Israel’s founder David Ben-Gurion, and Nazi Adolf Eichmann, 

I’m used to bringing viewers into history. This is a story that’s still in front of our eyes. I don’t know if it’s even history yet. I had to change the end of the film just a few weeks ago to update what happened to Nova festivalgoer Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was murdered after his time in captivity. This film is a never-ending story, unfortunately. The hostages haven’t been brought home and there’s not yet a ceasefire.

Festivalgoer victims were mostly secular, progressive types — partying, drugs

That’s the reality. A brutal fundamentalistic movement is obsessively looking to destroy the values of Western society. These were young people at a music festival celebrating life and love and peace: very naïve, very free-spirited. And they faced the most horrific people, who value death.

I want people to find themselves immersed. This is why the film is told in present time — so you feel exactly what it was like in each moment. There’s no interpretation. You’re there. That’s intentional.

The interview process with these festivalgoers.

We had a psychologist on set to meet the survivors right after their interviews. They had a session because they were very concerned with retrieving the trauma.

For all of them, it was a necessity to come and tell their story for the sake of the loved ones who are not with them, in the memory of those who are gone and in the hope of the hostages coming back. For them, they are not in the aftermath but still coping and waiting for closure to this story. It’s continuing.

We Will Dance Again is now streaming on Paramount+.