For Tom Shoval, making the film “A Letter to David” was a way to ensure that his friend David Cunio was not just a face on a kidnapped poster after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, during which over 250 hostages were taken to Gaza.

The material coming in the day of the attack, which left at least 1,200 people dead, was “uncensored, unfiltered, with no dignity, no way to look at perspective and to understand something — just horror, horror, horror,” Shoval told Reuters.

It was “this blast of images, of carnage and violence, graphic violence, that almost makes you blind,” he said. “You can’t really see the person. You just see the horror.”

In the film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival yesterday, Shoval wanted to show that Cunio, who remains a hostage, was someone with motivations, dreams and nightmares.

What resulted was “A Letter to David,” Shoval’s deeply personal cinematic message to Cunio, who starred along with his twin brother in the director’s first feature, 2013’s “Youth”.

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