Avi Nesher's October 7 drama 'Our Loves' heads to Toronto amid boycott calls and Ophir Award recognition

A film dramatising the October 7, 2023 attacks is heading to the Toronto International Film Festival this autumn, carrying 12 Ophir Award nominations and the weight of an ongoing conflict.

Avi Nesher wrote and directed Our Loves, which premieres in TIFF's Centrepiece section. The film follows five Israeli men and women in the days leading up to and during the attacks that killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals and saw 251 people abducted, according to Variety. Nesher built the script from stories gathered from real survivors.

Nesher is not a director who arrived at this material from a distance. He spent four years as an analyst in the IDF before moving into film. In the Variety interview, he was direct about what the film is and is not: Our Loves is not about the historic, military, or political dimensions of October 7. It is about the people caught up in it. He also discussed Benjamin Netanyahu's culpability for the attacks and noted that the subsequent war on Gaza has claimed 73,000 Palestinian lives.

The festival berth did not come quietly. Our Loves was programmed at Toronto despite boycott demands, described by The Jewish Chronicle as a rare example of an Israeli film screening at a major international festival in the current climate. At the Jerusalem Film Festival in late July, the film was presented as a case study in overcoming the international boycott of Israeli cinema, per The Jerusalem Post.

Back home, the film is already collecting hardware. It is up for 12 Ophir Awards — the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars — including Best Film, and it will open the Haifa International Film Festival. A theatrical release in Israel is scheduled for September 2026, according to The Times of Israel.

The ensemble cast is large and familiar to Israeli audiences. Shalom Michaelshvili, Magi Azarzar, Yaniv Biton, Noa Cohen, Lena Fraifeld, Hadas Yaron, Kim Or Azulay, Nunu, and Lior Miller lead the film, among others, per Deadline.

Behind the camera, the production drew international partners early. Fox Entertainment Studios and Access Entertainment joined the project, which is produced by Sipur Studios — a structure that gives the film distribution and financing reach beyond Israel's borders.

For a festival marketplace, the question now is how buyers and audiences respond to a film rooted in an event still reverberating. Toronto's Centrepiece section, programmed for works that sit between mainstream and art-house, places Our Loves in front of the sales agents and acquisition executives who decide what reaches cinemas in other countries. The film's path through boycott calls, award nominations, and a major festival slot has already made it one of the most closely watched titles of the autumn circuit.