LONDON — Last week, I attended a screening of “#NOVA,” a new documentary about the trance-music festival where Hamas terrorists killed more than 360 people and took as many as 40 hostages during the Oct. 7 rampage in Israel. The film, without narration, is composed almost entirely of evidence from the phones of festivalgoers and video taken by the terrorists. It unfolds like many a horror movie, with young people reveling in their freedom and having fun, oblivious to the monster stalking them. By the end, the woman sitting next to me was weeping into the shoulder of the person on her other side.
As it happens, I visited the Nova festival site a few weeks ago. It is in a clearing near the Kibbutz Re’im, amid the verdant agricultural fields planted by kibbutzim in southern Israel. The festival site has been turned into a memorial, a forest of metal poles about 5 feet tall, mounted with large photos of those killed or taken hostage. So many are smiling and hopeful — beautiful — that sometimes the thought of what happened to them makes you look away.
Many of the metal poles were ringed at the bottom by small stones, messages and other loving tokens. There was a steady flow of visitors the day I was there, including off-duty Israel Defense Forces soldiers, quietly studying the dozens and dozens and dozens of faces — reminders, though none are needed, of why Israel must fight. The festival site is a somber place and tranquil. Except when the silence is broken periodically by the heavy thud of nearby Israeli artillery firing into Gaza.
Yoni Heilman, an IDF soldier whose Gaza war diary appeared in the journal Sapir, visited the Nova memorial on Jan. 29. “I’m sure the experience felt raw for the hundreds of visitors we saw there,” he wrote, “but for me the site already feels curated and sanitized, a stark difference from the forest filled with burnt-out vehicles, tents, and bodies that I remember from my first days here.”
The “#NOVA” documentary takes viewers back to the festival site before the carnage, before the spasm of rape and murder, when the rave was just beginning, thousands of young people arriving for a gathering billed as “a journey of unity and love.” They take selfies and record videos, excited about the night of dancing amid pulsing lights and electronic music that awaits.
The Hamas terrorists, too, record themselves in eager anticipation of what lies ahead. Shouting with delight, they race toward the border with Israel in pickup trucks, automobiles and motorcycles, bearing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The symmetry is unnerving: festivalgoers and terrorists, both giddy with expectation — one group celebrating life, the other death.
The first sign of trouble at Nova is Hamas rockets in the sky, exploding as they’re intercepted by Israel’s air-defense system. Some of the festivalgoers initially think that the bursts are fireworks, maybe a treat to mark the new day and re-energize the party after a long night. Some people take cover; others keep dancing. Israelis, someone says, are accustomed to rockets. But there are a lot of them. The music stops.
Word spreads of gunfire in the distance. Maybe a terrorist or two has breached the border wall? Anxiety turns to panic for some, but others don’t want the party to end. Drugs taken in the warm cocoon of communal dancing cloud judgment amid the growing emergency. As the young people pack up their camping gear and load their cars — the dirt road from the site is already clogged with vehicles — the viewer thinks: Run! Just leave it behind. Go!
The extraordinary thing about the film is that every step of the way, we know what many of the festivalgoers are thinking and doing. They document it all on their phones, from the first stirring of alarm to the desperate fleeing for their lives. At the beginning, just noting what a bummer it is that the rave ended prematurely; later, whispering as they hide in a thicket , hoping the nearby terrorists won’t discover them. They call their parents to say they love them, to say goodbye.
It is jarring, at first, when these young people — nearly everyone seems to be in their 20s, some in their teens — keep recording even as they shriek and sprint away from automatic gunfire. In some other setting, the temptation might be to think ungenerous thoughts about the narcissism of the TikTok generation, but here the viewer is grateful that this indisputable Oct. 7 record has been made of the worst atrocity targeting Jews since the Holocaust.
Of course, Hamas terrorists also kept the cameras running. As the attackers methodically shoot into each portable toilet in a long row on the festival grounds, in case someone is hiding inside. As they machine-gun automobiles of people trying to escape. As they execute an injured person lying on the ground. As they toss a grenade into a thick-walled shelter where their quarry has taken refuge. That, too, is an indisputable record.
At the Nova site when I visited, one other loud noise, in addition to artillery fire, disturbed the quiet. An airplane suddenly flew by, close overhead, and quickly disappeared beyond the trees. People looked up, then at each other. Was that a military plane? Didn’t seem like it.
Moments later, it flew by again, and we got a better view. It was just a single-engine prop plane, but loud and low. It seemed to be making passes over the area. An IDF soldier said maybe the plane was spraying the nearby crops. With a small smile and a shrug, he said, “Life goes on.”
I thought about the Kibbutz Beeri just down the road, and the yard outside one of the homes destroyed on Oct. 7, where a lemon tree sagged under the weight of its unpicked fruit. I thought of two young women I saw in Jerusalem, wearing army fatigues and slowly walking side by side, one pushing a baby carriage, the other carrying an automatic weapon. Life goes on.
