Award Winning Filmmaker Rob Mor is releasing a new documentary on May 14 on Youtube, titled “Echoes of Loss: Eight Days in Israel,” focusing on how grief has engulfed the nation following the October 7 terror attacks.
The film is produced in collaboration with TallBoy and Rova Media productions, as well as in collaboration with organizations such as One Family and IDF Widows and Orphans. It explores Mor’s journey through eight days in Israel, while interviewing surviving widows and families for first hand testimonies.
The documentary aims to show the world that the feelings of grief and loss of Israelis should not be politicized or disregarded and to show that these voices matter.
Rob Mor is a widower himself after losing his wife to ovarian cancer in 2019. He is a single dad to their daughter. In 2022, he wrote and produced a short called “Ghosted,” which explored the idea of finding love after loss. “Ghosted'' won the best picture award at the Los Angeles Film Awards in 2022.
For Rob, speaking openly about the grieving process and sharing his journey through art was not just cathartic but essential. Today, he aims to help others grieving a loss.
“In a time of increasing darkness, we must respond with an increasing of light,” said the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a quote which opens the trailer to the film.
The trailer itself shows several of the Israelis Mor interviews in his documentary.
“I am an American Jew who grew up in one of the most Jewish suburbs in Chicago. My dad, Adi…is Israeli. My family is Israeli. I don’t have an Israeli passport,” Mor says as he is shown introducing himself in the trailer.
The video then cuts to him driving while speaking to an audience, saying, “Shalom Hevrei!” meaning Hello friends, in Hebrew.
Grief in Israel after the October 7 attack
“After the attacks on Israel on October 7, I have been glued to the news and social media. I have never been more alarmed at the rise of Jew hatred in my entire life. And I also knew many Israelis were grieving, and perhaps feeling dehumanized in their grief,” he comments in the trailer.
He then shares that in addition to Israel being in “a fight for its survival,” he said he knew that Israel was in “a fight against its own grief, against the outpouring of emotions, the good, the bad, and the ugly that come when faced with death.”
Explaining the inspiration for the film, he adds, “I couldn’t stand by any longer and not tell their story. I couldn’t wait another moment to not try to help them see a glimpse of light at the end of this very dark tunnel called grief.”
As the trailer comes to a close, a torn-up, faded, and tattered Israeli flag flies in the wind.