Doc Edge 2025 Craccum Coverage | A Letter to David

It's pretty much procedural seeing everyone else except Israeli's cultural actors at least recognise and critique the authoritarian pipeline between their past marginalisation and present-day complicity contributing to the 77-year-long military occupation of Palestine. Apparently, history starts on October 7, 2023—as the film so bluntly reminds us from the first opening minutes—and everything else before the production of A Letter to David functions as some undisturbed Edenic paradise that exists independent of time and causality. Unfortunately, time has caught up with the filmmakers, and they unsurprisingly burrow their heads further down their collars with 'meta-cinematic' nostalgia alongside the deliberate omission of the Palestinian struggle. After all, this is a 'universal', 'humanist' story of 'familial strength' buttressing the abstract existence of evil and its anti-semitic manifestations that—coincidentally—is festering two kilometres away from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

The difference between Palestinians and the Israeli subjects we follow in the film is that Palestinians at least attempt to rebuild their homes from the rubble day after day whenever the IDF arrives with their bulldozers and assault rifles to demolish their homes. Eitan, our one-half of a twin brother, doesn't need to repair or renovate what is left of his childhood home since he isn't faced with the prospect of losing the right to his property or has to argue for building permits while the neighbouring settlement actively restricts essential services like water, electricity and transportation.

A dishonest framing of a rightful tragedy by filmmakers who cried 'hostages'.

This is what Doc Edge has to say about this film:

This affecting visual journey reflects on what was and never will be again, the cruel separation of twin brothers, and the inexplicable connection between life and cinema, memory and reality, offering testimony through what already exists, without showing the horrors of that day.

You can't be complicit if you refuse to show genocide, right? Alas, this doesn't go both ways for the Israel Film Council, which Doc Edge misconstrues as poetic flourish. Doc Edge will have you believe in their Saatchi & Saatchi-commissioned slogan of being 'sapiosexy' if you buy tickets to any of the films in their programme. I hope anyone who still wants to see A Letter to David in theatres still preserves that ironic faux narcissism peddled by the festival even after the curtains fall. You'll probably need it if you don't wanna get called out as a spineless gentile.

Doc Edge Festival is in Auckland from 25 June through to 13 July. The festival will also be showing in Christchurch and Wellington (16 July - 27 July).

A Letter to David will be premiering in Auckland on the following dates:

29 June 2025 - 3:00pm - Bridgeway Cinema
6 July 2025 - 3:00pm - The Capitol Cinema

A Letter to David

A personal cinematic letter from filmmaker Tom Shoval to David Cunio, who was taken by Hamas from the Nir Oz kibbutz on 7 October 2023.

Doc EdgeJohn Lau