Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again review – an unflinching, moving account of Hamas’ attack

When the rockets began raining down over the Gaza-Israel border on 7 October 2023, some revellers at the nearby Nova music festival thought they were fireworks. Even when it became clear that they were missiles, many attenders weren’t particularly alarmed. Some were used to the rockets and felt they still had time to pack up their tents before driving home. But once they got in their cars, traffic was at a standstill – Hamas militants had blocked the road out of the site. Increasingly frightened, some began to document their journeys on their phones.

This film, from the Israeli director Yariv Moser, uses those videos – in combination with Hamas body camera footage – to recount the subsequent attack and frenzied survival mission of the festival-goers. In many cases, there is no need to imagine what they witnessed that day; much of it has been preserved first-hand in harrowingly visceral detail.

Yet despite the bracing actuality of this footage, a fog of unreality hangs over Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again. It focuses exclusively on those who attended the festival, just one of the locations Hamas targeted on that day (364 festival attenders were murdered, approximately one-third of the total Israeli casualties). One survivor describes his experiences as “like seeing a horror movie with your own eyes”. Another is reminded of the merciless executions in Squid Game. Somebody else recognises a type of gun used by Hamas – a kalashnikov – from video games. Those fleeing struggled to accept what was happening; one man explains that he recorded the scene on his phone because he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

For its victims, 7 October felt like nightmarish fiction incarnate. Taking cues from this, the documentary unfolds much like a disaster movie. The first part sets the scene, painting a picture of Nova – a hedonistic trance festival – as a bastion of peace. Interviewees recall their worries about skipping Shabbat dinner and hopes for eventual dancefloor transcendence.

But this supposedly archetypal example of youthful abandon immediately jars. Like traditional raves, Nova’s location was released just hours before it started. It turned out to be only three miles (5km) from the border – so close that the Gaza-Israel barrier was visible from the festival site. One woman recalls a friend worrying that rockets might hit them. In an effort to escape, some attenders hid in the small bomb shelters that line the roads. From an outsider’s perspective, it already seems like a war zone.

Soon, the documentary takes on the breathless, nauseating propulsion of a horror film. Some people hide from gun-toting terrorists; one young woman passes out inside the airless fridge where she cowers for hours. A man in a shelter is forced to throw back the live grenades militants have hurled inside. Others drive or run. In every case, the odds are so stacked against these unarmed civilians that escape seems beyond the realms of possibility. One woman who was being shot at while crouching behind an open car door thought she must be dead, as she felt no pain; she couldn’t believe she had not been hit.

That the Israeli authorities didn’t come to their aid for so long – we are told the first police reinforcements arrived six hours after the rocket fire started – was similarly surreal. Such was the silence from the police and the army that one woman thought they no longer existed – that Hamas had conquered Israel.

This delayed response is not explained. In fact, there are countless things that the film opts not to discuss. The footage we see – while graphic and extremely disturbing – does not convey all the dimensions of the atrocity that occurred that day.

Of course, the horror has only proliferated in the year since. There is barely any mention of the Israeli government’s reaction to the 7 October attacks – in fact, the film provides almost no context about the conflict in the region. Some may consider this a problematic omission, but the documentary’s focus is very clear: it tells the story of these Israeli citizens – utterly defenceless in the face of Hamas’ indiscriminate onslaught – and it does so unflinchingly, exhaustively and movingly.

Although Surviving October 7th’s middle section recalls a found-footage dystopian drama, its conclusion is more disturbing than any you will find in mainstream fiction. Survivors convey a newfound ambivalence towards life itself, a feeling that set in during the interminable hours of the attack. We are told that some who escaped have since killed themselves. One man explains that his former self ceased to exist on that day, that he must attempt to begin again as a different person. Another says her son is the only reason she is still alive. The subtitle – We Will Dance Again – is optimistic, but this film makes it abundantly clear that even a shred of hope is hard to find.

• Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer