Israeli director's 'Letter to David' film about hostage seeks to capture person behind the horror

By Hanna Rantala

For Tom Shoval, making the film "A Letter to David" was a way to ensure that his friend David Cunio was not just a face on a kidnapped poster after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, during which over 250 hostages were taken to Gaza by militants.

The material coming in the day of the attack, which left at least 1,200 people dead, was "uncensored, unfiltered, with no dignity, no way to look at perspective and to understand something - just horror, horror, horror," Shoval told Reuters.

It was "this blast of images, of carnage and violence, graphic violence, that almost makes you blind," he said. "You can't really see the person. You just see the horror."

In the film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday, Shoval wanted to show that Cunio, who remains a hostage, was someone with motivations, dreams and nightmares.

"I wanted to show that and release the person from this horror that was blinding us all," he said.

What resulted was "A Letter to David," Shoval's deeply personal cinematic message to Cunio, who starred along with his twin brother in the director's first feature, 2013's "Youth."

The film uses footage from "Youth" along with home video shot by the Cunios during the making of that film.

That is contrasted against footage shot by Shoval in the Cunios' kibbutz in the weeks and months after the attack, showing how the tight-knit community was changed by it.

"I felt that I have to talk to him somehow," said Shoval. "I'm a filmmaker and this is the only way I can approach it."

In the intimate home video footage, the Cunio twins film their day-to-day lives at Kibbutz Nir Oz: wandering around an orange grove, pulling pranks from a rooftop, flirting with girls.

"Watching that old footage, it was chilling," Shoval said.

'HE WILL COME BACK'

The film, said Shoval, was a way to mourn the end of an era, but he does not mourn for David. "For me he's alive and he will come back. And the film is in a way a cry of hope for that," he said.

Shoval hopes that seeing the film will let others get to know David and raise awareness of the hostages' hard conditions. "It's a matter of life and death," he said.

The ups and downs in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been "a roller coaster," said Shoval, but he does not want the fact that there are still hostages to feel normal.

Palestinian militant groups have said that they will release three hostages seized from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Saturday, though Cunio was not among them.

Hamas had earlier threatened not to proceed with the release of more hostages after it accused Israel of violating the terms of the ceasefire by blocking aid from entering Gaza.

"It's worse that we will get used to the fact that there are hostages there and just live our lives," Shoval said.

If the film awakens audiences even for a moment, to see that this is happening and important, "then I guess it's worth it."