The haphazard collection of people all somehow emerge from their safe room and the battlefield that day while Hamas terrorists still rampage nearby. Shellshocked grandparents. A couple about to have their first baby even as the house around them is in flames. And two children \u2013 whose parents were murdered and their sister kidnapped.<\/p>\n\n\n
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For the average disconnected viewer who may be swept up in today’s cultural moment, who has preconceived views on Israel and turns a blind eye to antisemitism, who wants nothing to do with any of it, such a heavy story must be told carefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It has to come without the politics and religion that allow them to dismiss it at first glance. Without the superfluous footage that lets it seem like a video game. It must be balanced,” Geffen said. “It must be just a story about people.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film does not unfold chronologically. In a break with pure documentary form, it is more rounded, with the stories interwoven, like a tapestry. She worked with both Jewish and non-Jewish editors to ensure that the storytelling was disciplined, that every bit of footage was necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And of course, some things don’t even need to be stated. “The way we are as a people, how we help each other\u2026 It’s a very biblical story, just baked into us. Bringing people into your home, taking care of them, washing the blood off their face. Giving them food and comfort.”<\/p>\n\n\n
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On October 7, Geffen was in California where she lives. She remembers struggling to absorb the news and footage, trying to explain what happened to her children. Her daughter asked plainly, “Is there going to be another Holocaust?” Two weeks later, she had already experienced an antisemitic incident at her public school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since Geffen previously spent formative time in Israel, she always felt a deep, Zionistic connection to it. Around six months after that day, she flew over to learn more for herself and bear witness in the aftermath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By chance, Dr. Fendel was the person giving her group a tour of the south. As the account of his own experiences from the day emerged, Geffen could see he was still processing it all, unaware of the gravity of what he had done by bringing random people in and tying their lives together through such a brutal time. She understood it was actually a much bigger story – and she eventually got everyone’s blessing to tell it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film has elements that in less focused hands might take up space in a more obvious way, with some narration by Israel Ziv, former head of the Israel Defense Force’s Operations Directorate, and Avi Issacharoff, one of the creators of the television series Fauda<\/em>. And yet with Geffen, the story remains solidly about the people in it that you otherwise would have never heard about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I went in thinking it was going to be about hope. But through filming, it really turned out to be a story about how on that day they all became a family.”<\/p>\n\n\n Perhaps it is natural that the human element of what happened resonates most profoundly with Geffen. Inevitably, it may recall an experience of her own that she has almost never spoken of. In 2010 at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland, an armed gunman took several people hostage and Geffen along with many others spent hours barricaded inside a room on the next floor, locked in the uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/toast-03-credit-tobias-hochstein-970x546.jpg\")