Director Barry Avrich at the Toronto International Film Festival Tribute Gala in Toronto in 2019.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Days after the Toronto International Film Festival pulled a Canadian documentary about Hamas’s attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the organization and the filmmaking team say they resolved issues surrounding the project to confirm its world premiere at the festival next month.
In a joint statement released late Thursday, TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey and director Barry Avrich say they have “worked together to find a resolution to satisfy important safety, legal and programming concerns. We are pleased to share that The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue will be an official TIFF selection at the festival this year, where we believe it will contribute to the vital conversations that film is meant to inspire.”
In the statement, Mr. Bailey also noted that TIFF’s “communication around its requirements” for festival inclusion “did not clearly articulate the concerns and roadblocks that arose and for that, we are sorry.”
While noting the “pain and frustration expressed by the public” over the issue, Mr. Bailey and Mr. Avrich added that more details about the film’s TIFF premiere, including the date, will be announced on Aug. 20.
The news arrives after TIFF earned a torrent of international headlines and scorn from politicians both at home and abroad for its back-and-forth decision-making regarding Mr. Avrich’s film.
As The Globe and Mail first reported, Mr. Bailey e-mailed Mr. Avrich this past Monday, withdrawing the film from the festival’s official 2025 lineup because “the risk of major, disruptive protest actions around the film’s presence at the Festival, including internal opposition, has become too great.”
In TIFF’s initial statement on the matter to trade-industry publication Deadline on Tuesday, though, the festival said it had pulled the film’s invitation because “general requirements for inclusion in the festival” were not met, including the clearance of rights to footage featuring Hamas’s livestream of its attack, with organizers also briefly mentioning the “potential threat of significant disruption.”
On Wednesday, condemnations were issued from Canadian politicians on the municipal, provincial and federal levels. There were also denunciations from such Jewish-advocacy organizations as Toronto’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, which called the decision to not screen the film an “insult to Canada’s Jewish community and to all who suffered unimaginable atrocities and trauma on October 7.”
Late on Wednesday, Mr. Bailey appeared to reverse course on the matter, noting in a statement posted on social media that he remained “committed to working with the filmmaker to meet TIFF’s screening requirements to allow the film to be screened at this year’s festival.” Mr. Bailey also said that any “claims that the film was rejected due to censorship are unequivocally false.”
The controversy echoes last year’s TIFF premiere of Russians at War, whose North American debut was postponed by festival organizers after protests from members of the Ukrainian community and concerns over security. The film eventually screened at TIFF’s Lightbox theatre two days after the 2024 festival officially wrapped.
Mr. Avrich, who has sat on TIFF’s board and is a long-time financial supporter of the organization, has previously premiered his films at TIFF and other festivals including the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and Toronto’s Hot Docs, where he also once sat on the board.
The Road Between Us focuses on the rescue mission of retired Israel Defense Forces Major-General Noam Tibon as he journeys from Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border, where his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren lived as it was attacked by Hamas forces on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and abducted 250 more during the attack.
In the nearly two years since, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s war on Hamas, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Earlier this month, human-rights groups warned that Gaza’s 2.1 million residents are facing rapidly spreading famine, while Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the “humanitarian disaster in Gaza is rapidly deteriorating.”
With files from Josh O’Kane