With NAZA dominating the headlines after winning the Special Jury Prize at Venice – not to mention a record 25-minute standing ovation – it’s refreshing to see another Israel-related documentary winning an award – this one portraying things accurately.
According to the Times of Israel, Israeli filmmaker Nim Shapira has been awarded a best documentary award at the New York Emmy Awards for Torn, which examines the battle over posters of Israeli hostages on the streets of New York City in the months following the October 7 massacre.
The film, which was initially released in 2024, focuses on “Kidnapped from Israel” posters that rapidly appeared around the city and across the globe in the days and weeks following Hamas’s attack, and how they became flashpoints in the culture war over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The “Kidnapped” posters appeared at innumerable venues across the city — subway stations, restaurants, politicians’ offices and much more. Just as quickly as they appeared, pro-Palestinian activists would tear them down.
The 75-minute film heavily features interviews with several New York-based hostage advocates, including the creators of the poster campaign, as well as family members of several of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas and other terror groups on October 7.
Filmmaker Shapira is quoted as saying, “I’m asking for the people who pulled down the posters to think about these victims and hostages who did nothing wrong.”
Unfortunately, I suspect he is asking too much.
After all, these were people who, while the blood of October 7’s victims was still fresh, couldn’t even tolerate seeing the faces of innocent Israelis kidnapped by terrorists. Men, women, children, and babies whose only crime was being in the wrong place when Hamas launched its murderous rampage. And yet, somehow, even their photographs were considered offensive enough to tear down.
There will be no 25-minute ovation in Venice for Torn. But the evidence it presents doesn’t depend on anonymous sources or anyone’s say-so. It’s on camera: New Yorkers, in broad daylight, tearing down the faces of kidnapped Israelis.
Then again, the atrocities of October 7 were also caught on camera. And that hasn’t stopped people from denying they happened.
Perhaps that is the real lesson of what happened in Venice: for some audiences, certain victims are always easier to look away from than others.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
