Alberto Rubio
“We hope that the documentary and the exhibition will serve to make the voices of the victims (of the Hamas attacks on 7 October) heard,” said Israeli ambassador Rodica Radian-Gordon during the Spanish premiere of the documentary ‘#NOVA’ and the exhibition ‘When Words Run Out’ by photojournalist Ziv Koren at the Galileo Cultural Centre in Madrid.
Radian-Gordon, after referring to the report that reveals the repetitive pattern of crimes against women committed by terrorists, stressed that “the recent visit to Israel by the UN Special Representative on Gender Violence in Conflict has helped to reduce the doubts, disbelief and silence with which the acts of violence against Israeli women perpetrated by Hamas were received”.
The exhibition, which will be open to the public until 28 March, consists of 29 photographs taken by Ziv Koren in the days following the 7 October massacre. The author and curator of the exhibition shared with the audience his memories of those moments and details of how and where the pictures were taken.
Ziv Koren also accompanied and captured in images the recovery process of Mia Shem, one of the victims of the attacks, who also appears in ‘#NOVA’, the Israeli documentary that shows the Hamas terrorist attack on the ‘Nova’ Music for Peace Festival.
The film, edited by festival director Dan Pe’er with real footage from mobile phones and cameras of festival-goers and the terrorists themselves, shows in 52 minutes the anguish of young people trying to flee the gunfire, their calls for help and farewell messages to their parents.
“What happened that day has a profound impact on our lives and will mark an entire generation of Israelis,” she said. She added that both the documentary and the exhibition “must serve to ensure that what happened is not forgotten because there is a danger that ignoring this explicit evidence of Hamas sexual violence will not only deny justice to the victims but perpetuate a culture of impunity that encourages the repetition of these crimes”.
The opening was attended by around 100 people, including the ambassadors of the US, Ukraine and Austria.
