The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, Canadian director Barry Avrich\u2019s gripping account of one family\u2019s fight for survival during Hamas\u2019s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, has won the People\u2019s Choice Documentary Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.<\/p>\n
The film follows retired Israeli general Noam Tibon as he races across a country under siege to save his son, journalist Amir Tibon, and his family from terrorists who have infiltrated their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the border with Gaza.<\/p>\n
Avrich used interviews with both men, a walk-through of the places Noam visited, dashcam and Israeli army footage, and even bodycam video live-streamed by the terrorists, to create a documentary \u201cwith the raw urgency of a survival film,\u201d TIFF wrote in a press release.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could make an excellent dramatic thriller out of the bones of Noam\u2019s story,\u201d National Post film reviewer Chris Knight wrote this week.<\/a><\/p>\n Barry Avrich.<\/p>\n The honour caps a tumultuous festival run for The Road Between Us.<\/p>\n TIFF organizers had pulled the documentary from the schedule in August, citing a failure to meet \u201clegal clearance for all footage.\u201d That decision was swiftly met with backlash from Canadian politicians and a consortium of Hollywood celebrities \u2014 including Amy Schumer, Howie Mandel, Debra Messing and Mayim Bialik \u2014 who penned a letter condemning the move.<\/p>\n In it, they said such silencing of \u201cIsraeli and Jewish\u201d creatives is becoming too common since Hamas\u2019s attack.<\/p>\n \u201cThe deliberate effort to marginalize and silence Jewish voices in the arts worldwide is intolerable, and it cannot be allowed to persist,\u201d the letter<\/a> read.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before TIFF reinstated the film and CEO Cameron Bailey apologized. He did so again at the sold-out premiere last week in Toronto.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to apologize, especially to the Jewish community, for mistakes I made in the lead-up to this day,\u201d he told the audience before the Wednesday screening. \u201cIn an environment of rising, dangerous antisemitism, I want to apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n While a small group of anti-Israel demonstrators protested outside sold-out Roy Thompson Hall<\/a>, Avrich received a standing ovation before the film played.<\/p>\n A Hamas supporter argues with a supporter of Israel outside Roy Thomson Hall, where the documentary film \u201cThe Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue\u201d was being viewed at the Toronto film festival on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.<\/p>\n National Post has contacted Avrich for comment on the recognition.<\/p>\n The Road Between Us opens in theatres on Oct. 3 with a rollout in the top 20 markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, Vancouver, Montreal and West Palm Beach.<\/p>\n Avrich told National Post this week he hopes schools and community organizations, regardless of their faith, see his film.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a story of family. As we\u2019ve said, there\u2019s a universal message,\u201d he said.<\/a> \u201cSo I\u2019m going to make sure that no stone is unturned, and that anybody who wants to see this film, anybody that should see this film, sees it.\u201d<\/p>\n Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com<\/a> and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, Canadian director Barry Avrich\u2019s gripping account of one family\u2019s fight for survival during Hamas\u2019s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, has won the People\u2019s Choice Documentary Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film follows retired Israeli general Noam Tibon as he races across a country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2021415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[345446,308806,371568,371567,366570,343725,318702],"class_list":["post-2021414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-barry-avrich","tag-israel","tag-melbar-entertainment","tag-national-post","tag-noam-tibon","tag-tiff","tag-toronto-international-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Gripping-Israel-Oct-7-documentary-wins-peoples-choice-award-at.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2021414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2021415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2021414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2021414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2021414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
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