For Keren Nechmad, the release of her debut feature should have been a celebration, the culmination of five years of tireless work. Instead, the premiere of Kissufim is steeped in grief, shadowed by events that have irrevocably altered its meaning.

The film, named after the kibbutz where it was shot, is pierced with tragedy. On October 7, 2023, Kissufim became the site of a massacre – thirteen residents killed during the attacks that swept through southern Israel. What was once the backdrop of a summertime drama is now a painful reminder of a violent rupture in Israeli life.

When Nechmad filmed on location in August 2021, her greatest concern was a Covid outbreak among her crew during the 17-day shoot. Since then, the world has shifted in unimaginable ways. Set for release soon after Hamas’s assault, Kissufim's premiere was postponed. “For many here, the film is still too triggering,” Nechmad admits quietly, reflecting the collective trauma that now haunts her work.

“It is very complicated,” the 30-year-old filmmaker explains from her home in Israel.

The cast of Kissufim (Photo: David Scouri)

The kibbutz buildings, made famous by the horrendous footage from Hamas bodycams, are an evocative backdrop for the drama.

During filming, the production was embraced by kibbutz residents. “Everybody there welcomed us; the community became part of the film. Some even appeared as extras – it was really special.”

This bond between the filmmaker and the kibbutz felt like a natural extension of the spirit that defines it. “Not many people outside Israel understand what a kibbutz is,” Nechmad continues. “They associate it with right-wing settlements, but it's the opposite – a socialist experiment in shared living.”

Nechmad with cinematographer, Ram Shweky, on set for Kissufim (Photo: David Scouri)

“The kibbutz really kept its essence,” the director said, noting that the film serves as a “capsule in time”, preserving the now-deserted kibbutz as it existed before the massacre. Even Zikim beach, where a seaside scene was filmed, is stained by tragedy as it is another site of the massacre.

Plans had been made for a screening in Kissufim itself, but the idea was ultimately shelved. For a community still raw from the Hamas attack, the film may be too painful to watch. Though Kissufim has found an audience on Netflix, Nechmad admits that within Israel, “it’s still a very difficult time to release this film... It feels like it’s a little too soon. We’re all still living in it.”

On its surface, Kissufim appears to be a sun-soaked coming-of-age romance. Set in the 1970s, it follows a group of post-army Israeli youths entangled in a love triangle during one sweltering summer: “The summer of their lives,” Nechmad describes. But beneath the haze of youthful desire lies the weight of a generation on the cusp of adulthood and a nation on the brink of war or peace.

The cast of Kissufim (Photo: David Scouri)

The story takes place just as an IDF unit is about to be discharged, their final duty spent tending the parched fields of southern Israel and sharing meals in the kibbutz's communal dining hall. “Part of your army service involved volunteering on a kibbutz,” Nechmad explains.

Set in 1977, when Israel still occupied Gaza, youths in short shorts and sunglasses casually crossed the border to swim at Gaza’s beaches or buy falafel in its markets.

Unlike most coming-of-age dramas, where summer romances bring the pangs of love and heartbreak, Kissufim carries an ominous undercurrent and the spectre of terrorism casts a shadow over even the breeziest scenes.

“In any other country, you’d be in college or university at that age,” Nechmad says. “But here, you’re learning responsibility. You have to think about things bigger than yourself.”

The film’s prescience reveals itself not only in its tragic ending but in other eerily prophetic scenes. In one, the characters try to capture an animal hiding in a tunnel beneath the kibbutz – an image that resonates with painful clarity. “I’m shocked at how close the film came to reality. So much of it echoes what happened on October 7,” Nechmad reflects.

Loosely based on her father, Amir’s, stories from the summer he spent on the kibbutz in 1979, Nechmad had originally intended to dedicate the film to two of her father’s friends, Elian Gazit and Reuven Foyer, who were killed when a grenade was thrown into a jeep they were driving in Gaza.

Nechmad's father, Amir, with friends on the kibbutz in the 1970s which inspired his daughter's debut feature film (courtesy of Nechmad)

Elian Gazit inspired the character Eli, played by Swell Ariel Or, and the families of the youngsters killed in the 1970s visited the set. “They’re grateful that we are telling this story,” Nechmad said.

While her father had often shared sorties of his time in the IDF, it was only when Nechmad returned to Israel following a post-army film degree in New York that she considered making a film about them.

“When I came back to Israel, I remember thinking there was a loop happening here. Every couple of years it is summer, it is hot, and there is a war.” That cyclical nature of conflict became central to her storytelling.

“These kids have to learn to live with it, to be part of it,” Nechmad explains. “Growing up in Israel, you’re always confronted with what it means to be Israeli, what it means to live in the Middle East.” The film captures this constant tension, the way youth and idealism exist in conflict.

Nachmad's father, Amir (centre), with his IDF unit in the 1970s (Photo: courtesy of Nechmad)

Drawing from her father’s recollections and her own time in the IDF, Nechmad teamed up with writers Hadar Arazi and Yonatan Bar Ilan to craft the script. The Camp David Accords had just been signed, and for a brief moment, the writers felt a flicker of hope. It was a time in Israel’s 76-year history when peace felt possible, a sentiment that lingers in the backdrop of the film, even as the threat of violence persists.

In 2024 hope feels elusive, and Kissufim plays more like a horror film than a coming-of-age drama. The film shows the kibbutz gathering around a grainy television to watch Egyptian president Anwar Sadat arrive in Jerusalem. Optimism is palpable and the scene captures a fleeting moment when peace seemed within reach. Throughout the film, characters wrestle with the tension between idealism and militarism.

Nechmad was intent on drawing parallels between past and present, blending contemporary music with 1970s tunes to underscore the cyclical nature of Israeli life. “Putting all of this context in the movie and showing how it always was like this is showing the loop,” she explains. “Everything in the film is about how the past meets the future, it is where my dad meets me.”

Swell Ariel Or playing Eli in Kissufim (Photo: David Scouri)

For nearly a year now, Israel has been stuck in that loop. “People woke up on Saturday [October 7] and their whole world changed. My whole life changed. We’re still there. We’re all still fighting for the hostages, we’re all still so invested in the future of this country and this region and how we can live here and feel safe again.”

The film captures how quickly life in Israel shifts from tranquillity to tragedy – “I wanted people to feel at ease right before the moment it happens because that’s what happens here; you feel at ease, like everything is fine, and then it hits you so hard.”

Kissufim serves as a haunting reminder of how terrorism has long targeted the innocent – particularly the young – something that resonates painfully in the aftermath of October 7, and yet it does not paint Israelis as perfect – one character, for example, falsely accuses an Arab man of taking a girl hostage.

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Despite Kissufim’s tragedy, Nechmad clings to hope like the idealists in her film,  “I hope one day we can be like Europe, where countries fought each other for hundreds of years and now there’s the European Union. I would love to go to Yemen, I would love to go to Beirut for the weekend.”

Yet hope is a fragile thing. “We’re in the middle of it, we’re still at war, we’re facing stuff we haven’t faced before,” she admits.

“I don’t want to say the hope is gone – because if it is gone, then what are we doing here – but it’s on a low burn.”

“Just before the current conflict, there was talk of peace, of new possibilities in the Middle East. Hopefully, with time to heal – I hope I’m not sounding naive – there will be an opportunity,” she says, referencing the optimism of the Abraham Accords four years ago.

Keren Nechmad at the Kissufim premiere in Israel (Photo: Rafi Delouya)

Though she doubts she’ll see the beaches of Gaza in her lifetime, Nechmad holds onto examples of reconciliation, like the friendship between Israel and Germany. In Kissufim, this is seen in the German volunteers who arrive at the kibbutz, bringing with them a taste of the outside world.

Sharing Levi’s jeans, music, and a more liberal attitude toward sex, these friendships marked the “world opening up, bringing an outside perspective,” something Nechmad sees as crucial to the film’s portrayal of hope.

“Germany is now Israel’s biggest alliance after the US; time really heals all wounds.”

For now, the filmmaker feels “a responsibility to advocate for the people who are here, to Israel, and to Kissufim.” Between interviews, she attends vigils and protests, hoping each day for peace.

“People need to heal, we need this war to be over, the hostages need to come home, and only after that can we think of the future.”