Toronto Film Festival braces for protests as Avi Nesher brings Oct. 7 drama

Toronto International Film Festival director Cameron Bailey went through a major upheaval last year, one that nearly cost him his job. After inviting Canadian Jewish filmmaker Barry Avrich to screen his documentary about retired Maj. Gen. Noam Tibon and his story of heroism on October 7, Bailey reversed course, citing a series of peculiar arguments, including that the use of video footage filmed by Hamas terrorists during the massacre could constitute a copyright violation. It later emerged that those explanations were little more than pretexts intended to cover up a revolt by several of the festival’s programmers, who had threatened to resign in protest over the inclusion of the pro-Israel film. Bailey found himself at the center of an enormous media storm, caught between pressure from his curatorial team on the inside and the fierce response of the Jewish community on the outside.