UPDATE, March 19: Bay Area screenings of “October 8,” which were planned to end today, have been extended through March 26.
UPDATE, March 28: Local screenings have been extended again. The documentary is now playing through April 22. Check showtimes here.
The new documentary “October 8,” which depicts some of the most extreme anti-Zionist and antisemitic responses in the United States to the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, has been described as “frightening,” “disturbing” and “timely.”
Formerly titled “October H8te,” it began playing across the country, including the Bay Area, on Thursday.
Individual reactions to the film will likely reflect people’s existing views of the long-running Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the current war, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hamas killing 1,200 people in Israel and taking 251 hostages and has resulted in Israel killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and leaving large parts of Gaza in ruins.
Director Wendy Sachs told a Jewish National Fund audience in November why she made the film.
“By Oct. 8, when we saw the streets of America explode and we saw people celebrating in Times Square, celebrating Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’ rather than as terrorists, and looking at what was happening on college campuses — from Cornell to Harvard to Penn, even to the UC schools — we knew something had gone terribly wrong,” she said. “As a filmmaker, I know I needed to document this moment.”
“October 8” examines American college campuses where pro-Palestinian protests came in waves and grew in intensity during the 2023-2024 academic year. The protest movement often devolved into anti-Israel rhetoric and, in some cases, into hate aimed at Jews regardless of their views about Israel or the war.
The documentary also explores the role of misinformation and provocation on social media that has fueled emotions.
It features student activists such as East Bay native and UC Santa Barbara graduate Tessa Veksler, as well as NYU professor and UC Berkeley grad Scott Galloway, actor Michael Rapaport, “Son of Hamas” Mosab Hassan Yousef and journalist Bari Weiss, among others.
Debra Messing, an actress and an “October 8” executive producer, is among a small number of celebrities who became pro-Israel activists after Oct. 7. In the trailer, Messing recalls her shock over reactions to the massacre.
“I thought the entire globe would be in mourning,” she says. “And not only was it silent, there was jubilation.”
In a Washington Post review, critic Michael O’Sullivan praised the documentary for including “often-moving first-person student testimony” but said it “sometimes threatens to flatten other, more significant complexity.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck said the film “does some cherry-picking of facts and draws some questionable conclusions. But there’s no denying the importance of its message and the need for corrective action by political, academic, religious and civil leaders.”
Sachs told CNN in February that the film doesn’t focus on the Israel-Hamas war.
“This is not a film litigating the war in Gaza,” she said. “What’s happening in Gaza is horrific. No one would disagree with that. But that’s not what this is about. This is about extremism versus democracy. It’s about what we’re seeing in the streets of America, on college campuses and on social media.”
The film was originally scheduled to screen at several theaters around the Bay Area through March 19, but the run has been extended through April 22 and additional theaters have been added.
“October 8” covers some of the same ground as “Blind Spot,” another documentary about campus antisemitism that was released in the fall and has screened at synagogues and JCCs around the country, including in the Bay Area.