Three years after the Hamas attack on October 7, Israeli television is returning to the events of that day with an unusually wide range of documentaries, special broadcasts, interviews, and memorial projects.
What is most striking about much of the new programming is how different it feels from the documentaries made in the first months after the attack. Those early films, understandably, were compiled at breakneck speed using cellphone footage, security-camera recordings, interviews, news videos, and even clips filmed by the terrorists themselves, to establish what happened and preserve evidence.
Now, three years later, filmmakers have had time to follow survivors, bereaved families, soldiers, released hostages, and displaced communities as they try to rebuild their lives, heal, and honor those they lost. They have developed certain narratives carefully; many of the new documentaries are not simply about surviving October 7, but they examine what it has meant to keep living afterward.
KAN’s anniversary programming includes several major new productions, and one of the most distinctive returns to the first hours of October 7 from an unexpected vantage point: Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
On October 5, the program Zman Emet will air The Shift (HaMishmeret), a documentary by Chen Liberman and Roni Singer about what happened inside the Beersheba hospital as hundreds of casualties began arriving on the day. Soroka found itself at the center of what turned out to be an unprecedented medical emergency, treating hundreds of wounded patients in a single day while the attack was still taking place.
Lineup of TV programs detailing life after Oct. 7
The program includes previously unseen security-camera footage from inside the hospital documenting the corridors, entrance plaza, and emergency-room gates in the hours after the massacre began.
KAN News will also broadcast After They Returned from October 5-7, a three-part series by anchor Tali Moreno.
Rather than focusing on the campaign to free the hostages, Moreno visits families after their relatives have come home. They speak about physical and psychological pain, the need to get to know returning family members again, and the growing realization that release from captivity did not mean a return to the life that existed before October 7.
On October 6, Hanoch Daum’s Taboo brings together four former hostages – Aviva Siegel, Doron Katz-Asher, Eitan Mor, and Guy Gilboa-Dalal – for a kind of retreat on a moshav. The four speak openly about how they survived, recalling the constant fear and how they maintained hope, and they open up about the long and complicated process of rebuilding life after their release. In keeping with Daum’s irreverent style, there is some black humor along the way.
A new documentary, His Footprints Remained, airing on October 5, tells the story of Ibrahim Kharouba, a veteran Bedouin IDF tracker who was killed fighting at the Nahal Oz base. Kharouba, who came from a family of trackers and had devoted his life to military service, joined the effort to defend soldiers trapped at the base during the attack.
KAN will also revisit October 7 through its digital memorial project, “7.10.360,” an interactive reconstruction of events in communities, towns, and roads throughout the Gaza border area. Drawing on thousands of hours of footage, testimony, WhatsApp messages, documents, recordings, interviews, and news reports, the project allows users to follow events beginning at 6:29 a.m. and currently includes around 250 individual stories.
HOT 8 is also featuring innovative programming that spotlights new angles, such as Saved by the Ball (Segel Haser), a film by Aviad Livny, about the Kfar Aza Foxes soccer team. The movie was screened at Docaviv 2026 and will air on October 5 at 9:15 p.m. on HOT 8 and will also be available on HOT VOD and NEXT TV.
Just days after October 7, the surviving players, who had been evacuated with other residents of Kfar Aza to Shefayim, began playing soccer again. They did so without the shoes they had left behind in homes they had fled, and without many friends and relatives who had been murdered or kidnapped.
They soon realized that soccer provided something almost nothing else could: 90 minutes during which they could feel, at least a little, like the people they had been before the attack. Roughly every two weeks, the Foxes began playing anyone willing to face them, including teams from other kibbutzim, hi-tech companies, Maccabi Tel Aviv veterans, Supernova music festival survivors, and Ashdod Port employees.
But when organizers tried to revive the tournament among Gaza-border kibbutzim in the summer of 2024, the Kfar Aza players refused. Their position was simple: They would not return “until everyone comes back.”
Displacement, bereavement, uncertainty: how 'Whose Are You?' explores life after Oct. 7
Another new HOT 8 film, Whose Are You? (Shel Mi At?), directed by Dotan Naveh, approaches Kfar Aza from a very different perspective. Ten women who married men from the kibbutz had formed a WhatsApp group called “Whose Are You?” as a way of helping each other find their place in the tight-knit community. On October 7, that ordinary question suddenly took on an entirely different, and often tragic, meaning.
The documentary focuses on three of the women who all experienced October 7 in different ways, despite living so close to one another. It follows them for over two years through displacement, bereavement, new motherhood, uncertainty, and the attempt to decide whether – and where – they can make a home again. It will air October 5 at 7:30 p.m. on HOT 8 and will also be available on HOT VOD and NEXT TV.
Another HOT 8 premiere, You Don’t Bury a Soul (Neshama Lo Kovrim), directed by Adi Feineru, focuses on 13 parents who lost children on October 7 as they travel for two weeks through southern India, accompanied by a team from Adama Tova, a therapeutic community that works with bereaved families. As they find themselves growing interested in the sights and sounds of India, they grapple with a painful question: If they allow themselves to move away from their grief and focus on other things, are they somehow abandoning their children? The film will air October 7 at 9:15 p.m. on HOT8.
HOT8 will also present Imprints of the Soul (Rishumei Nefesh), a collection of five short docu-poetic films by young filmmakers from the western Negev. The collection, which screened at Docaviv 2026, will be available beginning October 5.
HOT will also make a large number of previously released October 7-related documentaries and programs available again.
Among the most prominent is Yariv Mozer’s Emmy-winning We Will Dance Again, in which survivors speak about the attack on Nova. It’s a harrowing film and not easy to watch, but memorable and beautifully made.
Tom Shoval’s A Letter to David, winner of the Ophir Award for Best Documentary, is a cinematic letter to David Cunio, who was kidnapped on October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife, children, and his brother Ariel. David and another brother, Eitan, starred years earlier in Shoval’s first feature film, Youth. The movie is an intimate look at a community that was torn apart by grief and loss, and Shoval re-edited it when David and Ariel were released in October 2025.
Other returning programming includes October 7: Emergency Call, which tells the story of Magen David Adom personnel through testimony and calls from residents of Gaza-border communities; Waiting for Him, about two young women whose partners were killed together during military service; and Omri Assenheim and Gilad Tokatly’s documentary series What Happened to the IDF?, which looks beyond October 7 itself to examine developments within the military over preceding decades.
HOT 8 will also broadcast the documentary, The Campaign: Disinformation in a Time of War, airing October 4 at 9:15 p.m., which examines propaganda and digital influence during the Israel-Hamas war. Journalist Warren Kinsella looks at bot networks, fake accounts, algorithms, coordinated campaigns, and Hamas’s international messaging strategy.
Two new Israeli documentaries on Yes Docu look at another group still living with the consequences of the war: reservists.
Good Morning Gaza, which premieres October 4 at 9 p.m. on Yes Docu and Yes VOD, focuses on how Or Brandes, a psychology student and reserve-duty soldier who served in Gaza as a tank driver, began broadcasting what amounted to an improvised podcast to other soldiers over the military radio network. The soldiers express emotions ranging from denial and thoughts of revenge to humor, and they even play pranks on each other. Through recordings from the radio network, combined with intimate footage from combat, the film offers a window into the emotional world of soldiers in the period after October 7. The film competed at the 2026 Jerusalem Film Festival and was directed and written by Hanan Brandes and Matan Sacofsky.
After the film airs, Yes VOD will also make available a companion podcast in which Brandes and Sacofsky discuss the making of their first film, reserve duty, war, trauma, and loss.
Immediately afterward, at 10 p.m., Yes Docu will premiere One Eye Open, directed by Tom Giat and produced by Ohad Milstein, which won the First Film Award at Docaviv 2026 and the 2026 Weil-Bloch Film Award. Over more than 400 days of reserve duty in Operation Iron Swords, Giat closely documented the growing crisis he and his fellow soldiers faced. The film traces the quiet voices of a group of reservists who answered the call to serve and found themselves staggering under the burden. It draws you into their world and makes you understand their stress and coping strategies.
These films will deepen people’s understanding of the tragedy itself, what led up to it, and, perhaps most importantly, will be helpful in grappling with the question of what to do next.
Cellcom TV and Keshet had not announced their special programming to mark the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War by press time.