\n\tDirector Barry Avrich and his protagonist \u2013 Ret. Gen. Noam Tibon \u2013 came by Deadline\u2019s Toronto Studio ahead of the world premiere.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI\u2019m happy that the film was reinstated, but it was emotionally stressful for me,\u201d Avrich told us. \u201cDid I anticipate that certainly there would be some controversy with the film, debate and dialogue, because we filmed in Israel? Yes, but that to me was just noise, because again, anybody that would have an issue with the film hasn\u2019t seen it. And so I always hoped\u2026 that the takeaway was going to be the family and not the politics. If that\u2019s naive, so be it. But I cared about what [Gen. Tibon] accomplished on that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Retired](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRetired Israeli Gen. Noam Tibon in the documentary \u2018The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of TIFF<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat Tibon accomplished was to spring to the aid of his son, daughter-in-law and two grandkids who were living on a kibbutz seized the morning of October 7 by Hamas gunmen.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was a crazy day, a unique day, and I used all the skills that I have, my instincts, my experience,\u201d Gen. Tibon recalled. \u201cI think the main lesson is that when you are in a chaotic situation and when your family or your people [are] under huge risk, there can be solutions. And the worst situation is to stay at home and watch TV or something like this. And the best way is to try to take action in order to rescue your family. And this is what I did on that day with my wife Gali.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBeing a father that really touched me,\u201d Avrich commented. \u201cWhat would you do if you were in this kind of situation?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNo film having to do with October 7th likely could have avoided igniting controversy, given worldwide reaction to Israel\u2019s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, which has cost tens of thousands of Palestinian lives. That invasion continues as the second anniversary of the October 7th terror attack approaches. In disinviting the film, TIFF did not reference either October 7th or Israel\u2019s invasion of Gaza, but said it was concerned the filmmakers hadn\u2019t cleared some footage of the October 7th attack itself. Critics \u2013 including Avrich himself, a former board member of the festival \u2013 accused TIFF of censorship. Negotiations between the filmmakers and the festival led TIFF to reinstate the film.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe controversy that erupted out of it, of them inviting it and then not inviting it, and the reaction from media such as yourselves \u2014 and you guys have been extraordinarily best in class in saying, what\u2019s going on here? You guys had the exclusive \u2014 and that ignited a response from Hollywood that I\u2019m very proud of, very proud of, and saying, whatever side that you\u2019re on, if you\u2019re on a side and there\u2019s no side because it\u2019s family. But if you\u2019re on a side in terms of this conflict, let\u2019s stop for a minute. And why are we protesting a film? If you want to protest what\u2019s going on, protest. I believe in protest. I believe in freedom of speech. But if you\u2019re protesting art, what is the point? Where does it stop? Where does it start? Don\u2019t buy a ticket. Don\u2019t go see this film if you don\u2019t like the subject matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWatch the full conversation in the video above.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Deadline Studio at TIFF is hosted at\u00a0Bisha Hotel<\/a>\u00a0and sponsored by\u00a0Cast & Crew<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Final Draft<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most highly anticipated films of the Toronto International Film Festival makes its world premiere Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":213430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[86675,171,53,85255,86676,64287,8790,77123,116817,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-213429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-barry-avrich","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-noam-tibon","12":"tag-the-road-between-us-the-ultimate-rescue","13":"tag-tiff","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-film-festival","16":"tag-toronto-studio","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115175653012993399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}