For Ziv (Feature Documentary)

FOR ZIV
Feature Documentary

Project Type: Feature Documentary
Project Status: Production
Director and Producer: Abby Walla

An intimate documentary that serves as a parents' love letter to their little boy who survived a terrorist attack he was too young to remember, and their determination to build him a life defined by resilience, not tragedy.

This trailer captures the early days of their journey. Keep reading for how it's unfolding...

LOGLINE

"For Ziv" is a multi-year documentary about a young Israeli family who survived the October 7th terrorist attack in Kibbutz Kfar Aza with their infant son, Ziv. Filmed as the world transforms irrevocably around them, it watches Ziv come of age while his parents shoulder their own grief and fight to give him a stable childhood, one temporary home at a time.

SYNOPSIS

One day, Maya and Dvir will have to tell their son, Ziv, the story.

They will tell him that he was a baby in a safe room in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, just 3km from Gaza, on October 7th, while Hamas terrorists waged war on the kibbutz just outside their window. For over 24 hours they held him in the dark, listening to the killing move house to house, and reading the WhatsApp messages from neighbors begging for help.

They will tell him how, in a single day, the life they had built was ripped away and people they loved were killed. Among them were Dvir's younger sister, Hadar, and her husband, Itay, murdered in their home, their ten-month-old twins left crying in the crib beside their father's body, used as bait to shoot anyone who tried to reach them.

They were two of more than 1,200 people killed across Israel that day, and Kfar Aza was among the hardest hit. The dead were not strangers. They were people Dvir had known his whole life, the friends whose children were meant to grow up beside Ziv.

This film is for him. "For Ziv" is not a film about that violent day. It is a film about the life that came after. As the cameras roll across several years, we watch the baby who stayed silent in the safe room become a boy running through the moving boxes of the next temporary home. Intimate and unflinching, the film stays with Maya and Dvir, who shield Ziv from their tremendous grief. They keep his days full of joy, and once he is asleep, the weight of it finds them on the porch over a cigarette.

One day they will tell Ziv the whole story. This film is how he will see it.

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MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT

"For Ziv" is in active production, filmed over several years, with some of its most meaningful chapters still ahead. The film follows the family's life as they live it, in real time.

We watch Ziv, now grown into a full-on little boy, begin to ask if Kfar Aza is where he is from. Home is a question the film keeps returning to. What does home mean when there is no permanent one? It lives in the small things that travel with them: the bear Ziv carries from place to place, the ashtray where Dvir sets his cigarettes, the books read aloud at night.

We follow a fertility journey that holds some of the family's deepest grief and its most fragile hope. After the attack, Maya and Dvir tried to begin again the way they always imagined, by growing their family. The losses that followed were devastating. Maya is pregnant again now, with a baby girl due in early October, almost exactly three years after October 7th. Ziv was born into the world they had. She will be the first born into the world they are building now.

And we watch Dvir channel his grief into something he can build. The kibbutz safe rooms were made to withstand rockets, not an armed invasion, and on October 7th that design cost lives. As a civil engineer, he has redesigned them so that what failed that day cannot fail the same way again: doors that lock and cannot be shot through, ventilation so no one is ever smoked out, windows that hold. The redesign has passed the army's checks and every room he retrofits will carry his sister Hadar's name.

Maya and Dvir are not public figures. They are private, ordinary people who have lived through something no family should. This is not a political film, and they are not a headline. The hope is simply that people will sit with them long enough to witness the humanity of one family, and to find something of their own lives in theirs.

Above all, "For Ziv" is a letter to the little boy at its center, so that one day he will know what he lived through, and how brave he was. He is the hero of this story, even if he will never remember it.

Meet The Filmmakers

Abby Walla

Director/Producer
Abby Walla is a Los Angeles based Actress/Writer/Filmmaker. She created the award-winning short film "Holiday Hostage", where she worked alongside Maggie Wheeler ("Janice" from Friends), Don Stark (The 70s Show, Green Book), and D.W. Moffett (Friday Night Lights, Switched at Birth).
She also served as Associate Producer on the narrative feature film "Cotton Candy Bubble Gum", which premiered at SXSW, continued its successful festival run at Bentonville Film Festival, and has since been distributed on Apple and Amazon.
Abby has worked with HBO, Netflix, ABC and Freeform collaborating with some of the most respected Directors in the industry including Paul Feig, David Mandel, and Nisha Ganatra.
She was enlisted to document the aftermath of October 7th in Israel, with footage featured in The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Journal, an experience that led her to "For Ziv".
As she dives deeper into the world of documentary filmmaking with the feature film “For Ziv,” her northstar is Elie Wiesel’s quote, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories.”
Dor Revivo

Cinematographer
Dor Revivo is an Israel Academy Award-winning cinematographer based in Tel Aviv, having graduated from the prestigious Film program at Sapir College in Israel.
With an eye for detail and a passion for storytelling, Dor works frequently on music videos, documentary films and commercials. One of his biggest clients is Adidas who he has been working with for over 4 years. In 2019 Dor created Roma Studios, a production and creative studio in Israel known for bringing ideas to life with a cinematic flair.
Most recently, Dor was part of the Israel Academy Award-winning team of "Shem Tov Heavy 2". He also worked on a feature-length documentary called "06:30," about the horrific events of October 7th, which was broadcast in Israel on Kan 11 and premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in NYC.
Nathan J. Minsberg

Field Producer
Nathan J. Minsberg is a filmmaker, producer, journalist, and creative strategist with a passion for storytelling. Born in Tel Aviv to a multicultural family, Minsberg's background spans media, communications, and the arts across South East Asia, Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East.
Minsberg's directorial debut, the feature-length documentary "Ginette" (2017), premiered at the Berlin Jewish Film Festival to critical acclaim. The intimate portrait follows a 90-year-old Tunisian Jewish matriarch in Marseille, weaving together diary readings and candid anecdotes to illuminate her extraordinary life story. "Ginette" is now part of the permanent archives at The Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. As a journalist and senior producer, Minsberg has reported extensively on Middle Eastern politics, diplomacy, security, culture, and technology for outlets like i24NEWS. He has also worked as a field producer with networks like CNN, RTL, and The FT during the current War in Israel on both Southern and Northern fronts.
Minsberg's other notable film credits include the Netflix productions "Hit & Run" (2021) as an art department coordinator and "The Girl from Oslo" (2021) as a production coordinator.