The Decibel - Oct. 7 documentary draws TIFF controversy

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

The Toronto International Film Festival has kicked off, but not without controversy. This year, the premiere of the documentary, “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Sacrifice”, took a brief turn on centre stage. Artists, programmers and filmmakers are locked in a debate about whether to screen the film about an Israeli family’s story during the October 7 attacks by Hamas.Barry Hertz, the Globe’s film editor, traces why TIFF pulled the documentary in the first place, why it was brought back into the lineup, and what TIFF’s flip-flopping says about programming public events in arts festivals. What is the responsibility of an arts organization in balancing artistic expression and free speech?Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off this week. It's often a glamorous time for the city when celebrity sightings and buzzy red carpet events become the talk of the town. But this year, TIF is embroiled in a controversy over a new documentary premiering at the festival. The Road Between Us is a Canadian documentary that looks at one family's story,

story on the day of the October 7th, 2023 attacks by Hamas in Israel. Barry Hertz is the Globe's film editor. Specifically, it looks at the journey of a retired IDF major general named Noam Tibon, whose son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren live at a kibbutz near the Gaza border. and his journey basically from Tel Aviv to that kibbutz to rescue his family who were on the front lines of this Hamas attack. In that attack, Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and abducted 250 more, many of whom have not come home.

Since then, the Israeli military has killed more than 63,000 Palestinians and displaced roughly 90% of Gazans from their homes. Human rights groups have declared a famine in Gaza City and warned that it could spread to the rest of the territory. And an international group of genocide scholars has declared a genocide is occurring in Gaza. Against this backdrop, TIF, Canada's biggest film festival, appears to have flip-flopped on whether to screen the road between us at all.

Today on the show. Barry's here to talk about why TIF pulled the dock in the first place, how they ultimately brought it back, and what role cultural organizations should play in facilitating conversations about some of the world's most difficult issues. I'm Susan Krishinsky-Robertson, guest hosting The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Barry. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

So this documentary gets approved to play, at TIF, but then that decision gets reversed on Monday, August 11th. Why did TIF withdraw its invitation? Well, TIF faced some internal opposition to the film, and there were security concerns, concerns surrounding demonstrations that might occur were this film to have played the festival, and there were some legal issues that also arose. So it was a combination of these factors that led TIF to withdraw the film from the festival. And what were the criticisms of that decision? Well, where to begin.

The story was very quickly picked up by Jewish community organizations across North America, across the world, that kind of frame that decision as either censorship, nonsensical, as there was kind of an element of the discussion that incorrectly methamphetical, as there was kind of an element of the discussion that incorrectly metastasized into the filmmakers needed to get Hamas to clear their public intellectual property. And then there were also, you know, denunciations that withdrawing the film was in itself an act of anti-Semitism. And that idea that they had to get clearance from Hamas was just false. Yeah, that was kind of twisted and misunderstood by certain players in the media, certain players in the online activism space. Now, there were legal issues

that were revolving around rights that did kind of come up, as I understand it. But the kind of compliance that, you know, Hamas would have to clear the rights to their live streamed footage of the October 7th attacks is kind of a red herring that's been introduced into the conversation. And so what happened next? Well, what happened next was exactly what TIF did not want to happen, which was just an avalanche of bad headlines from around the world. The decision made the cover of the New York Post. It was picked up by every outlet of any sort. And it just put Tiff in a spotlight that it was trying to avoid in the first place, all,

while it is entering what is supposed to be a landmark edition, its 50th anniversary. And so they ended up actually announcing that they would play it again. What were the terms for reinstating the road between us into the TIF lineup? Was it a reaction to public pressure? Well, in a joint statement that was issued with TIF's chief executive, Cameron Bailey, and also signed by the filmmaking team behind the documentary, It was vaguely kind of put that they were working toward resolving any outstanding issues that might arise with the film in terms of legalities or anything like that. We don't really know is the basic answer as to what has or hasn't changed, what alterations or, you know, securements of guarantees have or have not been made.

The perhaps cynical view would be to say that the public. pressure certainly just landed on TIF with a thud, and they had to figure out a way out of it. People on all sides of the conflict remain upset about how this has all gone down. And as I understand it, the showing of the documentary that is taking place now is perhaps a little bit more limited? It is more limited, but we don't know whether it is more limited than it would have been upon the film's initial acceptance into the festival. My understanding is when the film was initially accepted by Cameron Bailey and the letter of Voffer went out formally in the summer, there was kind of an idea or a plan

that it would play in the light box cinema, which is TIF's five-screen multiplex home in downtown Toronto, beautiful cinemas, some of which are very large, but not as large as the theater that the film is going to now be playing in, which is Roy Thompson Hall, which is the largest venue that the festival uses. So there's that. The size of the screening is definitely increased by several folds. There is only one screening, which is the world premiere, which is scheduled for Wednesday, September the 10th at, I believe, two in the afternoon. We don't know when the original schedule would have been. I have been made to understand that it would have been around the same time, which is in the second half of the festival,

that's kind of the what's referred to basically by the press as the sleepier half of the festival. Most of the big names have gone back home. Most of the international press has gone back home by that point in time. This film is not getting what is called the P&I screening press and industry. That's unusual, but it's not unprecedented. Films have skipped that option in the past. whether it was because the festival didn't want to do it or because the producers of the film didn't want to do it, it's unclear. It's happened. It's rare. And it does seem to keep this away from,

as you point out, the main TIF venue and also that more buzzy part of the festival, possibly keeping protests contained? Possibly, although Roy Thompson Hall is across and right down the street from the main TIF venue. It is along that festival strip of King West in downtown. on Toronto, which is very much where the festival is concentrated. Then again, Roy Thompson Hall is no stranger to protests and hosting controversial events. So there might be kind of a crowd management aspect there that's to be considered where Toronto police and private security are more comfortable devising a plan, establishing a perimeter, what have you, rather than inside the lightbox theater, which is not so accustomed to such heavily watched over

events. We'll be right back. Barry, this isn't the first time that TIF has faced controversy around platforming politically fraught documentaries. Last year, it was Russians at war, which was pulled. And some critics argued it was pro-Russia propaganda because it followed fighters on the Russian side of the front line in the Russia-Ukraine war. You've seen that doc now. Do you agree with that criticism?

No, and I've been following the Russians at war story for quite some time, certainly since that scandal broke at TIF last year. And what I found was that the conversation revolved around a lot of denunciations about that film without anybody having actually had the opportunity to see it. Yeah, and I noted your review said Russians at war is an anti-war film at heart, a point that some people made. have missed. But more broadly, Barry, it seems at the core of a lot of these discussions is the issue of platforming, or how festivals make decisions about what material deserves to be amplified. Are there parallels between these two controversies over TIF screening these documentaries? I'd say, you know, parallels is an interesting word. I might more slide toward echoes because there are just some similarities, but the threads that connect them are so tenured.

and so vastly different, because we're talking about two vastly different geopolitical conflicts, two very different filmmakers, and I think that it's very difficult to say. It's such a thorny issue, and there is such strong feelings on both sides, but on the question of platforming, a festival is a festival, and a festival has programmers, and it has chief executives, and it has artistic directors, and they decide what they want to play. And it is their prerogative to accept or decline a film based on their mission, shared sensibilities.

Some of the criticism that I've been seeing over the past two weeks is that, you know, TIF should have its public funding cuts because it dared to not play this film at one point. But the public does not get to make a decision about what does and does not play TIF. And at the same time, a festival like TIF, like any film festival in the world,

accepts and declines films on a regular basis. They decline thousands of films a year. On the other, that said, and I know I'm doing a lot of other hands. I've run out of hands to say on one hand or the other. I have too many hands. Once a film gets a TIF premiere, that is elevating it.

That is putting it on a pedestal. That is giving it seal of approval. in some sense. Maybe it doesn't say that we as a festival agree with the story, message, perhaps political motivations of the film, but we agree that it should be seen and that it should be seen here at our festival on our screens. And so these are, as you point out, really different circumstances. But all that said, what have these two controversies shown, do you think, about how TIF navigates political fault lines? Well, I feel it's shown that TIF, like a lot of other cultural institutions, both in Canada and abroad, are facing incredibly difficult, tricky challenges that they simply are not really equipped to handle or certainly have not been preparing themselves to handle.

In the Russians at war situation, there was a sort of decisiveness on display. It was, from the beginning, we are playing this film. We hear the concerns. We hear the protests. We welcome a conversation, but this film is going to play one way or another, one venue or the other. For the road between us, that decisiveness is not really present. Anyone following the kind of domino-falling effect of the statements that have been coming out of TIF can see that there's an indecisiveness at play.

The film is out because of X, Y, and Z. Well, wait, we're working with the filmmakers because of A, B, and C. Now it's back in, and we've reached a conclusion, and sorry for all the miscommunication and stress that that caused various communities. So even as an outsider who knows nothing about the film industry, how film festivals work, what programming is, you can watch that series of events and scratch your head in confusion and just think, well, this doesn't really seem like a situation that has been handled with as much care

and attention to detail and political sensitivity as necessary. Barry, you know, across the arts landscape, we're seeing. I'm thinking festivals grapple with how to respond to world events and to politically fraught issues. I'm thinking of examples like the Frankfurt Book Fair, which faced a backlash in 2023 for canceling an event honoring Palestinian author Adania Shibli. Then more recently, we had Vancouver's Push Theater Festival, which canceled a play about an Israeli first responders crisis of conscience. Pro-Palestinian protesters took issue with the way Palestinian suffering was depicted in that

work. And of course, the prestigious Giller Literary Prize lost its title sponsor after protests over Scotia Bank's investment in an Israeli arms manufacturer. It really seems that this is a tense moment for arts organizations. Is this level of intensity anything new? And are arts organizations rethinking their role more broadly amid the pressure to take a stand on contentious issues? I can only hope and assume that arts organizations are doing just that because the issue isn't going away. The war is not going away, unfortunately and distressingly. And the volume of the conversation is only getting louder. People are only more upset on either side, any side of the conflict. So I would hope so. What they can do, I don't know. It's a very tricky thing because you

risk alienating one portion of your audience if you do take a stand. But at the same time, especially in the cultural sector, as an artistic principle, do you support voices that are telling stories no matter where they come from, no matter what they are saying? Ostensibly, yes. It's very easy to sit on the sidelines and say ex-institution should do this and how dare they do that. But until you are in the position where you are having to deal with stakeholders and audiences and your own conscience, I don't think any of us can really say what a place like TIF, what a place like the Giller Prize, what a place like hot docks should do. What we can do and we can rightly do is say, wow, that could have been. handled a little bit better and more respectful to all parties involved. Filmmakers, employees, audiences, and the artists, of course, above all, which is what these places are to serve.

At the same time, it's not necessarily new, too, because if you look at TIF's history, if you look at any art institution's history, this is not, the Middle East conflict did not just arise in 2025. In 2009, TIF went through a very similar situation. where they had a program called City to City, which spotlight the cinema of Tel Aviv. And that sparked a huge protest and a Canadian filmmaker pulling their film and then getting support from international filmmakers.

Did TIF learn any lessons about that? It's hard to say. How does all of this impact programming of these festivals? Well, I think this is something that we might see a significant shift in, going forward. And that is this awful conflict and the just kind of torturous dialogue that it has created, is it going to result in programmers thinking twice, doubting themselves, doubting their instincts, doubting their sensibilities about what stories they do want a platform? And I'm not

talking about one side or the other. I'm talking about just anything with a sensitivity attached to it. And is that going to result in a kind of self-censorship? Is it going to result in a timidity? Is it going to result in a watering down of those very difficult conversations, ugly, you know, stomach-churning stuff that we need to have. Audiences need to have, filmmakers need to have, organizations need to have? Are we going to enter a period of playing it safe and playing it too safe? And safety is the death of artistic expression. So that is concerning. And I'm not saying that's necessarily what's happening this instance. I'm not saying that's what happened with the Russians at war instance. But you can see those issues burbling, if not royal,

in the background. Barry, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having. That was Barry Hertz, the Globe's film editor. That's it for today. I'm Susan Krishinsky-Robertson. Tiff Lamb produced this episode. Our producers are Madlan White,

Mikhail Stein, and Ellie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thank you for listening. Thank you.