The height of a documentary’s importance is usually judged by the magnitude of the stars willing to get involved. In the case of Wendy Sachs’ October 8, it’s telling that the only Hollywood faces to appear onscreen are Will & Grace’s Debra Messing and cult character actor Michael Rapaport. “I know where I am in the pecking order,” says the latter. “There are so many other bigger names, the fact that I was the big Hollywood name [to speak out] — aside from the great Debra Messing — is some real f*ckin disappointing f*ckin’ shit.”
Rapaport’s candid outburst speaks to the documentary’s central thesis, which is that the attack on Israel by terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023, has led to a rise in antisemitism in America — much of it under the guise of anti-Zionism — of a kind not seen since the Second World War. The film’s title refers to the immediate aftermath of that day, as the east and west coast began processing the news, but, really, October 8 is about what one of its talking heads calls “the unfathomable chain reaction” that it sparked, much of it in the student world.
There is, of course, a broader political context to this scenario, which is still playing out in the Middle East, but October 8 sets that to one side (neither Trump nor Netanyahu are players here, and the concept of a two-state solution is only mentioned in passing, albeit in a positive way). Instead, the film functions as a kind angry rebuttal to the media’s coverage of Israel — and by extension Jewish people — and an even angrier comment on its silence.
Weirdly, the film finds some kinship with the Trump administration, citing DEI as a cultural tool being weaponized by the hard left and taken up by Israel’s enemies. Indeed, the first half of the film details the impact of intersectionality and how the Palestinian cause, represented by the rise in keffiyehs as a political statement, has become “the gold standard of oppression”. But, as Sachs goes on to show, likening Gaza to pre-apartheid South Africa is very different to preaching support for a global intifada. And there’s also the paradoxical fact that, while safe spaces and trigger warnings are supposedly a fixture of modern-day education, an alarming number of Jewish students no longer feel safe on campus, a problem sometimes exacerbated, as Sachs illustrates, by the staff.
Roughly speaking, the film exists in two halves, with the first half looking back at the horrors of October 7 and the unwillingness of Americans to acknowledge what happened. This leads down several pathways, including a brief, and not exactly flattering exploration of Students for Justice in Palestine. The second half, meanwhile, takes a generational view of what’s happening, and, most pointedly of all, wonders aloud why Americans continue to turn an almost willfully blind eye to the savagery of that day — the murder, the rape, the torture — and what’s broken in society that causes people to tear down posters of those taken hostage.
Sachs’s emotive and disturbing film doesn’t find many answers to the questions it poses, and is mostly preaching to the converted, but it does shine a much-needed light on a growing, malignant problem. And with America as divided as it is today, it’s one that won’t be going away any time soon.
Title: October 8
Distributor: Briarcliff Entertainment
Director: Wendy Sachs
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins