“The Road Between Us: The eventual Rescue” [way between us: to save] is simply a Canadian documentary (2025), about which it happened loudly a fewer weeks ago, erstwhile the festival organizers in Toronto (TIFF) decided to remove the movie from the show, for a completely absurd reason. In the end, the film, which was shown only once, at the closed show, won the People’s Choice Award, which is simply a good sign of the Toronton audience, and badly about organizers and censorship attempts.
What's the movie about? In short – this is simply a movie about love. But let me tell you – in a telegraphic summary – an outline of the communicative of love, about which he tells “The Road Between Us”. Early on 7 October 2023 retired general Cahalu Noam Tibon, returning from jogging finds a text from Amir's son, who, along with his wife and 2 daughters (two and 3 years old), lives in the Kibbutz Nahal Oz, located just outside the Gaza border. Amir reports to his father that he and his wife and daughters have locked himself in a “mamad”, that is, in a “tank room”, with reinforced walls and armored plates on windows (as many Israel today) and there is simply a regular conflict going on outside. Tibon tries to connect with his military colleagues; he calls everywhere but without success. Together with Gali's wife, they conclude that there is no army, they get into the car and – armed with 1 weapon – they leave Tel Aviv south.
Whoever drove in Israel knows how tiny the country is: from Tel Aviv (or from Jerusalem) anywhere can be reached in an hr or two. After a while they are behind Ashkelon, and there – emptiness. Police and army – no sign. The further south, the more traces of the Hamas massacre. Along the road you can see – here the manager refers to recordings from October 7, 23 – rows of burnt cars and quite a few murdered people.
However, the road to Nahal Oz is much longer than it would have been from the map: in the next fewer hours, Noam Tibon and his wife are saving a couple fleeing the festival Nova of frightened young men, then they drive a severely wounded officer to the tummy of Cahalu. Though their love for their boy and for their grandchildren is inactive on the run, they both know that they cannot leave others to die. For Noam and Gali, boy and granddaughters are everything. If they had died, their lives would have ended, too. Meanwhile, Amir is getting more and more alarming news: they sit in the dark, hear shots all the time, choke out of heat and deficiency of air, the girls are no longer mentally able (and any crying can bring murderers) and run out of batteries on their phones.
Early afternoon Tibon, along with a tiny group of soldiers “captured” along the way penetrates the terrorist cordon and penetrates into the kibbutz, in which there is inactive a conflict between terrorists and respective safety men. On the way you can see the actual face of genocide; Hamas murders everyone; children, old people, women, men, no difference. For General Noam Tibon's household the tragic day ends in tears of happiness – for thousands of others, no.
“The road between us: to the rescue” is 1 of the fewer documentary films to be viewed like a feature film, holding the tension from the first to the last moment. Although the manager focuses on the past of the unfortunate Kibbutz Nahal Oz and the Tibon family, it is impossible to avoid more general questions and further reflection. At the very end we see Noam Tibon standing at the gates of the kibbutz and wondering out loud who was responsible. Where was the Israeli army for all those hours, erstwhile gangs of murderers killed all the civilians they encountered, why almost all the structures of the state that came into being failed – I quote General Tibon here – “to make the only place on earth where Jews could feel safe.” Amir, his son, looking further, says that Israel, the full Israeli society, will now gotta rethink who they are and who they want to be in the future. Coming back to life before the horror movie on October 7th is impossible.
Jan Grabowski
