October 8: ‘This is a fight for the west, for the free world, for democracy’

It was a photo of college student Tessa Veksler than stopped filmmaker Wendy Sachs in her tracks as she scrolled through Instagram. Tessa – looking like any other fresh-faced, sweats-wearing student, save the silver Star of David around her neck - standing in front of UC Santa Barbara’s Multicultural Center where a handmade “Zionists Not Allowed” was plastered to its glass door.

The irony of it: the multicultural centre. Sachs had already begun interviewing other students for what would become her documentary October 8, when suddenly she knew it had to include Veksler. “When I saw that [post], honestly, I felt gutted, my heart stopped. I stopped cold.

“For a Jewish person of a certain age, when we see [a sign like] that, it means ‘No Jew Allowed.’ I said, ‘I need to find her, I need to interview her, and I started stalking her on Instagram – I slid into her DMs, as the kids say.”

Veksler’s onscreen testimony – in which she relays the extent to which she was bullied and harassed on campus, only barely winning a vote against recalling her position as president of the student body at UCSB – is the heartbeat of October 8. At the Melbourne preview screening last month as a guest of the Dor Foundation – whose mission it is to combat antisemitism in Australia - Veksler received a lengthy standing ovation.

The movie, which opens this Thursday in Sydney and Melbourne, aims not to revisit the October 7 massacre, but instead uses the way that American universities became so divided over the war as a prompt to explain how the world arrived at the levels of antisemitism and hatred that we see today. 

This is why Sachs, who was the film’s director, executive producer and co-writer, wants as many non-Jewish people to see it as possible, stressing that this should not be seen as a political movie. “We’re not litigating the war… I’m just unpacking how we got to this moment where Hamas is being celebrated as freedom fighters, rather than being condemned as terrorists. I want people to understand that it’s much bigger than [being about] the Jewish community and the state of Israel.”

Indeed, the film also focuses on the dangers of Islamic Jihadism and extremism; it’s about opening one’s eyes to a world where democracy and the values of the west are being undermined. Tessa Veksler - who has since graduated – adds: “I want the takeaway to be that this is a fight for the west, this is a fight for the free world, this is a fight for democracy.

“Hamas’s goal isn’t just to wipe out Jews - that’s part of it. They have a much bigger goal and that is to wipe out the west, and that is what we should unite on. The film is not meant to frighten you; it’s mean to show you the reality to spark you to advocate and fight for change. The last thing I want is for people to feel bad for me. This is meant to show you that [the worst] can happen to you and you’re capable of rising above it and turning that moment into a movement.”

October 8 covers a lot of ground, including how the algorithm of Tik-Tok is skewed to deliver anti-Israeli content, and how media bias can result in an untrue story zigzagging around the globe. It effectively points out that this is not just a war on the land but also on social media – and of truth – and while the bulk of action takes place on American campuses, it is easy to draw parallels with the often fraught situation at universities in Australia.

Talia Khan, a graduate student of MIT whose mother is Jewish and father Afghan Muslim, is one of the film’s subjects, having testified about her college experience before Congress. In Australia to promote it, her meetings with fellow students here left her shocked.

“It’s sad to hear that almost exactly the same thing happened here…since being here, I think we’ve all noticed that [while] in the United States on campus you have people say, ‘Oh you dirty Zionist, fuck Israel,’ and that kind of thing, [whereas] you have people here saying, ‘Fuck you Jew.’...This hasn’t necessarily been as obvious in the United States [where] people use Zionist as a code word.

“It’s crazy how open people are about being antisemitic, and it’s really horrible to know that so many people outside of the Jewish community have stood by and watched it happen.”

Part of the blame of the on-campus hatred lies, she believes, in the fact “that students have been completely failed by the education system. They have not been taught critical thinking skills – they’ve been taught to pass exams – and so when they’re faced with an inundation of anti-Israel propaganda on their TikToks, and haven’t been taught the tools to be able to process it and think critically about it, it’s a huge problem.”

Prior to October 8, Sachs had directed Surge, a film about the congressional campaigns of three women, and had written two books, Fearless and Free, and How She Really Does It, which both centre on working women. Having grown up in a secular Jewish home, she had spent time in Israel on a program in her youth, and realised she wanted to capture the response to October 7 soon afterwards.

At the beginning, the only person to fight for the movie was Sachs herself. “I shopped it around to places where I’d worked before, and no one wanted to touch it.” Even later, “they shut us down at every turn and it did feel challenging to get it out into the world.” In the end, however, the movie was shown in screens across America, and “it became a real box office success, despite the naysayers saying that no one would see a film like this.”

Sachs also felt strongly about ending October 8 with a note of optimism. “You never want to end your film on something really depressing. This is a very heavy film, make no mistake. This is what we’re living through and it’s stunning, it’s horrifying and the images in the first ten minutes are pretty graphic.

“I didn’t want the audience to want to jump out of the window after the end of the film. You need to end on something hopeful. When I interviewed (actress, advocate and October 8’s executive producer) Debra Messing, she had just come back from Israel. She had never been to Israel before, and here she is, this unbelievable spokesperson speaking out against antisemitism. And at the end of the interview, she talks about (Israel’s national anthem) Hatikvah and hope and all these beautiful things.”

The movie concludes with a message about the importance of allyship, as well. “Because we are not alone, and as Debra says, we can’t do it alone. While the people on the other side are really loud… there’s a big segment in the middle [saying] that are not educated but they’re not haters.”

Sachs adds that “This film is for them. While it is [also] wonderful for the Jewish community and it’s affirming and I want young people to see Talia and Tessa and feel really inspired and encouraged by them, it is really meant for the non-Jewish audiences to understand what’s going on.”

Wendy Sachs, Tessa Veksler and Talia Khan were guests in Australia of The Dor Foundation.

October 8 will screen from Thursday at the Classic Cinema in Elsternwick (Melbourne) and Ritz in Randwick (Sydney). Anyone who wants to show private screenings can email october8@thedorfoundation.org.au