‘Torn’ documentary on battle over Israeli hostage posters wins New York Emmy award

Israeli filmmaker Nim Shapira on Saturday was awarded with a best documentary award at the New York Emmy Awards for his film “Torn,” which centers on the battle over posters for Israeli hostages on the streets of New York City in the months after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

The film, which was initially released in 2024, focuses on “Kidnapped from Israel” posters that rapidly appeared around the city and across the globe in the days and weeks following Hamas’s attack, and how they became flashpoints in the culture war over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The “Kidnapped” posters appeared at innumerable venues across the city — subway stations, restaurants, politicians’ offices and much more. Just as quickly as they appeared, pro-Palestinian activists would tear them down.

The 75-minute film heavily features interviews with several New York-based hostage advocates, including the creators of the poster campaign, as well as family members of several of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas and other terror groups on October 7.

Unable to secure interviews with pro-Palestinian activists who led the poster-ripping campaign, the documentary instead relies on TV news footage and social media posts to hear from individuals who were opposed to the poster campaign.

The footage shows individuals ripping down or defacing hostage posters, who are then asked why they are doing it and if they would like to share their name. Responses vary from smiling and laughing to giving the middle finger and showing a variety of expletives. Those who engaged on video provided answers like, “Go colonize somewhere else,” “Your posters are propaganda,” or “Let’s put up the 3,000 kidnapped kids in Gaza.”

Its director, Shapira, said in an interview last year that the film asks for empathy from those who tore down the posters, as well as those angered by the pro-Palestinian activists doing so.

“I’m asking for the people who pulled down the posters to think about these victims and hostages who did nothing wrong,” he said. “And I’m also asking for understanding from, let’s say, my side, to understand that the number one reason why people tore down the posters is that the death toll in Gaza kept rising throughout this war.”

Shapira said his film “is not about Israel or Palestine. My film is about New York and America. I’m dying for the day that the film will be irrelevant, but we are more tribal and polarized than ever. We exist in different echo chambers and different silos. The poster war did not just tear down the posters, but also tore down the social fabric of the city.”

Shapira wrote an opinion article last week about the reluctance of some viewers to see Israeli victims as worthy of sympathy amid the widespread anger over Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza, which began after the 2023 Hamas-led onslaught.

He did not release a statement following his win at the New York Emmy Awards, which are awarded by the city’s chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.