Carin M. Smilk
Everyone has heard of the unlikely hero — that person who, despite all odds, comes to the rescue in a seemingly herculean way. It can be the mom who, in a burst of adrenaline, partially lifts a car to save a child stuck underneath; a neighbor who puts out a fire while community members are asleep; or a Good Samaritan who jumps into a body of water to rescue a person flailing about.
And then, there’s the likely hero — that person trained to do the right thing as a result of career and happenstance. In the movies, such roles are often fulfilled by fictional Marvel or DC Comics characters, or in earlier years, in the form of Eliot Ness- or James Bond-like types. In more contemporary times, the actor Liam Neeson has put on that hat to become the quintessential family protector and defender who boasts a “special set of skills.”
In Israel, such individuals are everywhere, exhibiting derring-do in the past two years since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Jewish communities on Oct. 7, 2023. They come in the likely form of the Israel Defense Forces, law enforcement and first responders, as well as in the unlikely appearance of hostages, bereaved families and volunteers who often risk their lives to help others.
In the 2025 documentary “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue,” these roles are epitomized by IDF Maj. Gen. (Res.) Noam Tibon and his wife, Gali Mir-Tibon, both 63.
The two drive to the rescue of their son and daughter-in-law — Amir and Miri Tibon, and their two young daughters — trapped in a safe room at Kibbutz Nahal Oz while Palestinian terrorists who infiltrated the Gaza border that morning swarmed the area and surrounded their home. The journey reads like a tension-filled blockbuster screenplay. (The Tibons also have another son, Uri.)
Despite main roads that were eerily empty as they barreled down south from their home in Tel Aviv (Gali commandeered the car, while Noam made phone calls and gripped his pistol), the couple interrupted their mission as they assisted person after person they encountered along the way — some who needed a safe haven, some who required medical attention and some military colleagues who were also performing impromptu rescues.
At one point, they separated for hours as they kept their heads about them and performed necessary tasks in what turned out to be one interminable day.
The film was released in U.S. and Canadian theaters in the fall, and is now making the rounds of Israel and Jewish film festivals, as well as events at Jewish Federations and related venues. It is part of the 30th anniversary of the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, to be screened on March 15 at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. And it is also slated to start streaming in the middle of the year.
Director Barry Avrich, 62, didn’t have to elevate any of the drama. It was built into the real-life story.
“I was looking for something to do around Oct. 7,” he told JNS. “I was looking for heroism and one ray of light. The key for me was a great storyteller and a great character,” which he said he found in the general. Tibon is nicknamed by his own family members as “911.”
The process of making the movie was something of a feat in and of itself.
Avrich noted that everything had to be approved, since basically, he was shooting on location in a crime scene. As such, he said, “We did lots of prep work; we didn’t want to waste the general’s time or a minute on the ground. We wanted a seamless presentation, properly planned and executed.”
He acknowledged how much, even as a seasoned professional, Israel’s border communities and the site of the ravaged kibbutz affected him as both an individual and an artist.
“Seeing this firsthand as a Jew, the aftermath of war materials on the road — bullets, missiles, abandoned cars — was very difficult for me. It was very, very emotional.”
Added to that, he said, was the job of reviewing vast amounts of footage from that day, much of it from the lens of Tibon.
“It stays with you,” Avrich said.
This wasn’t his only work that involved intrepid Jewish men. He directed “Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz” (2018), who at the age of 27, with no prior trial experience, secured guilty verdicts against 22 Nazis during the Nuremberg Trials following World War II and the Holocaust. Ferencz, who died in 2023, lived to 103.
Avrich saw a line between the two, Ferencz and Tibon, noting that they can be described as extraordinarily optimistic, not living “in a world of vengeance and darkness.” Ferencz, he said, “sought to make people accountable, but he was always of the mind that this, too, shall pass.”
A correlation to the Holocaust has consistently been made these last two years. Avrich, now intimately linked to both historical periods through his work, said that after Oct. 7, “I really feel that the Jewish people, the world, will never be the same.”
‘Wrapped in the Flag of a Family’
The 95-minute Canadian documentary, produced by Mark Selby, had a bumpy debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Scheduled to premiere in September, festival organizers suddenly got nervous and rescinded the invitation as a result of the same outside pressure that has encompassed the arts, culture and academic sphere for Israelis and Diaspora Jews for years, though heightened to new levels since Oct. 7.
In this case, the claim was twofold: fear of anti-Israel protesters (the oft-repeated “safety” factor) and, in what was deemed a rather outlandish excuse, the fact that the filmmakers had not cleared rights for the usage of GoPro video taken by the terrorists, which they themselves exhibited via social media and individual smartphones from that day forward.
“They decided it was a film they didn’t want to show,” Avrich told JNS, emphasizing that art should be about the art. “It proved to be a mistake for them.”
After an immediate backlash, the festival decided to go ahead and run the film as planned for an audience that filled the 1,800-seat Roy Thomson Hall and gave it a three-minute standing ovation. And it wound up winning a TIFF People’s Choice Award in the documentary category.
Avrich said he wants the film to reach as large an audience as possible in a visual market that seems saturated by the events of Oct. 7 — shows on Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV; semi-fictional series on other channels; never-ending media reports; and a flurry of brand-new documentaries.
Yet he noted that a moratorium need not be placed on such works. “We have a problem in Hollywood — that there is a quota on films about a certain subject.” That said, he asked a rhetorical question: “Do we have enough rom-coms, sci-fi, World War II movies? Are there ever enough?”
Through a Zoom call, he practically winked at the notion.
In fact, Avrich didn’t want to linger on any negatives — and certainly not the political.
“This is a film wrapped in the flag of a family, not a country,” he said. “The Tibons are fighters, but they are also optimistic. You watch this film because of hope. It’s a story of hope.”
