Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich had no intention of making a political statement when he opted to produce a documentary about a retired Israeli general who’d raced south from Tel Aviv on October 7, 2023, after hearing that his son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters were trapped in their safe room at Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

For Avrich, General Noam Tibon’s tale was a thriller and a universal story of parental love and courage. Although set in Israel, it was “wrapped in the flag of a family, not a country,” he explained.

But the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where Avrich had premiered many films, turned the documentary political. After inviting The Road Between Us to screen, the festival abruptly rescinded the offer, allegedly because Avrich lacked copyright permission to include bodycam footage shot and uploaded to the internet by Hamas terrorists and hostage takers.

That decision was so outrageous that the director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation called it “the moral equivalent of asking Holocaust survivors to secure Adolf Hitler’s written consent to show Nazi-shot footage of concentration camps.” More than 1,000 entertainment professionals signed an open letter written by the Creative Community for Peace alleging that TIFF was “appeasing anti-Israel and antisemitic activists’ intent to silence Jewish voices.” Jewish community groups from across the world blasted the decision and TIFF donors threatened to pull their support.

Ultimately, the festival organizers backed down and The Road Between Us was shown to a packed audience. Avrich received a three-minute standing ovation and the film went on to win the festival’s People’s Choice Award, Documentary.

Now it’s your turn to see the film behind the controversy, the tale of a man who refused to sit helplessly at home in Tel Aviv worrying about his family and risked his life to save theirs.

After the screening, General Noam Tibon and filmmaker Barry Avrich will join us for a discussion about Tibon’s decision to drive into the terrorist storm, the making of the film and the controversy it generated.

The discussion will be moderated by Isaac Zablocki. Zablocki is the Director of film programs at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. He attended film school at Columbia University and went on to work at Miramax films. Previously, he produced and directed feature films and developed film educational programs for the Board of Education. Since 2004, Isaac has been developing film programs at the JCC including The Israel Film Center.