It seems like an impossible feat nowadays, but a documentary about antisemitism is getting a wide-release in AMC cinemas this week. Titled “October 8” and directed by Wendy Sachs, it tells the story of the rise of antisemitism in American after the October 7 attack on Israel that led to the Israel-Hamas War back in 2023. It features expert voices and eye witness testimony of the October 7 attack, and paints a picture that feels familiar to many American Jews, with voices we all recognize, from actress Debra Messing to Sheryl Sandberg.
For Sachs, the work on this documentary started, in a sense, on October 7, 2023. “This was this modern day Kristallnacht that I needed to document,” she tells Kveller over Zoom.
A veteran documentary director and former “Dateline” producer, her work has mainly focused on feminist stories of women, from her book “Fearless and Free: How Smart Women Pivot and Relaunch Their Careers” to her 2020 film “Surge” about the congressional campaigns of Jana Sanchez, Liz Watson and Lauren Underwood. This movie is her first Jewish project, though she doesn’t think of it as one that’s meant for the Jewish community, specifically.
“I think of the audience as a global audience. I made this film not for the Jewish community, although it’s affirming for the Jewish community, it’s really important for the Jewish community, and the Jewish community is embracing this film,” she says. “It was intentionally made for a non-Jewish audience, for them to understand what antisemitism looks like today, for them to see, when they see a ‘Zionists not allowed’ sign, that means ‘Jew.'”
She wants non-Jews in this country and beyond “to understand just how few Jews there are in America and the world. There are these data points that we put into the film that, to me, are so important because people just don’t know. And when we’re showing it to non-Jews, they’re really blown away by this film.”
The movie focuses a lot on what has been unfolding on college campuses. On October 7, Sachs herself was visiting her daughter, a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and the two watched in horror together as her phone lit up with rocket alerts and alarming news out of Israel.
“We saw the images coming out of Israel, children, babies, grandparents, young people being kidnapped, being live-streamed and murdered,” Sachs recalls. “And then it was October 8, you know, when I saw the protests in Times Square, the protests against Israel, supporting Hamas as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists. And then I saw everything unfolding on college campuses, from Harvard and Cornell and NYU and Columbia and Penn.”
“I really just thought that the world had lost its mind,” Sachs says. By the end of October, she had already written the first treatment of the film and began production. And since then, she’s been on the most intense journey of her professional life. “All I’ve been doing for 17 months now is working on this project,” Sachs tells Kveller. “I would call this my life’s work. I’ve put everything I have into this film, and not to speak for every Jew in the diaspora, but the post October 7 world has transformed all of us.”
Sachs sees the film as balanced. “We’re not preaching. We’re not litigating the war. This isn’t about the Bibi [Netanyahu] government. It’s not political.” She wanted a diversity of perspectives of Jewish experiences. She brings Israeli perspectives, including from activists like Noa Tishby, and eyewitness testimonies from the attack. Other experts include Dan Senor, Asaf Romirowsky and Representative Ritchie Torres.
“The reason [Torres is] such a focal point is because he’s progressive, because he is Black and Latino and gay, and is unapologetically speaking out on Israel and gets so much hate. That’s an interesting story to me. Like, you speak out about Israel, and you’re all of these things, and you are someone who is on the left, and you’re getting kicked out of the village because of that.”
The rise of antisemitism wasn’t necessarily something that surprised the filmmaker, raised in a secular Jewish home in Miami. “I think the explosion of antisemitism is shocking, but it’s been tracking… I would say since 2016 is when we really saw the ugliness start to really bubble up to the surface with Charlottesville.”
“The horseshoe idea former ambassador [Deborah] Lipstadt talks about is that the only place where people on the far left and the far right connect is antisemitism,” she says. “That, to me, is really interesting, and that’s where we’re at right now.”
That isn’t necessarily a new reality, but what stands out to Sachs is that it was “more fringe before” to be openly antisemitic. “It has become more culturally accepted. I’ve been tracking the obsession, the sort of irrational, obsessive hate of Israel, for a long time now. And so it’s not a surprise to me that that has really manifested into sort of a hardcore antisemitism.”
One thing Sachs firmly believes is that there is no difference “between anti-Zionism and antisemitism anymore. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Criticizing the State of Israel is not antisemitic — that’s not necessarily anti-Zionist either — but believing that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist, that is antisemitic,” she says.
“It was very important to bring in the most credible voices, to basically lift the hood up and show what’s been going on,” Sachs explains. “How did we get to this moment where Hamas is being celebrated as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists? That’s really what this film ladders up to.”
