In Berlin, Israeli director screens homage to hostage David Cunio and his family

In 2013, filmmaker Tom Shoval was at the Berlin Film Festival with David Cunio and Eitan Cunio, twin brothers from Kibbutz Nir Oz who starred in his first feature film “Youth,” about an ill-advised scheme in which two brothers kidnap a young woman to pay off their family debts.

Now, 12 years later, Shoval was back at the Berlinale this week to screen his film “A Letter to David,” produced by Maya Fischer, Alona Refua and Roy Bareket at Jerusalem-based Green Productions, and Nancy Spielberg under her Playmount Productions banner.

Shoval described it as a “kind of letter in my head” to David Cunio, the onetime co-star of “Youth,” who was taken hostage on October 7, 2023, from his Nir Oz home.

Cunio, 34, his wife Sharon Alony-Cunio and their twin three-year-old daughters were all kidnapped that day, as were Sharon’s sister and her young daughter, who were visiting.

David and Eitan’s younger brother, Ariel Cunio, 27, was also taken hostage, with his girlfriend, Arbel Yehoud.

David Cunio and Ariel Cunio are still hostage in Gaza. Sharon Alony-Cunio, her sister and their young daughters were released in November 2023. Yehoud was released from captivity on January 30.

“It’s this very complicated process that isn’t over yet,” said Shoval. “Until David and Ariel and all the rest come home, I can’t look at this as a finished project. I’ve never done something like this, which is so subject to the current reality. It’s new for me and it rattles me.”

The film is Shoval’s token of love and friendship for the family he first met 12 years ago when the Cunio twins starred in his first feature.

A graduate of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel film school, Shoval set out to make a film about brothers, and he emphasizes that element in “A Letter to David,” which includes footage of himself and his brother as teens, goofing off in their bedroom, as well as the casting process with the Cunio brothers.

The film includes some footage from “Youth,” as well as interviews from the last year with Eitan Cunio, the Cunio parents and David Cunio’s wife, Sharon.

Yet the most poignant and surprising imagery in “A Letter to David” comes from footage filmed in Nir Oz more than a decade ago, as a kind of extra from the production company, said Shoval.

Twenty-two-year-olds David and Eitan Cunio are seen wandering around Nir Oz, eating dinner with their family, and waking up their younger brother Ariel.

They’re seen hanging out with David’s best friend, Yarden Bibas, and Shiri Silberman, then 21, before the couple married six years ago and she became Shiri Bibas.

It’s also before the Bibases had two red-headed children; before October 7, when they were all taken hostage by Hamas terrorists; before Shiri and her sons, Ariel and Kfir, were murdered in captivity; before their bodies were brought home in coffins last week.

Shoval is heard whispering in the background of the film, as he realizes the identities of the people in the decade-old footage.

“I wanted to show Nir Oz what it was for the family and the brothers,” said Shoval. “Not just the destruction, but the beauty, the collective experience that they had there.”

One in four members of Kibbutz Nir Oz were murdered or taken captive on October 7. Only a handful of houses were left untouched; many were burned and destroyed by the marauding Hamas terrorists.

On October 7, Shoval was in Berlin visiting a friend who asked him to join a screenwriting project.

He spoke briefly that morning with his wife, back home in Tel Aviv, who was sheltering from the incessant rocket sirens. At some point, he went to work and ignored his phone.

Hours later, he went back online, and discovered the emerging picture of the situation in Israel’s south, where Hamas terrorists were overrunning communities and army bases, killing people and taking hostages.

“I saw the south and the kibbutzim and I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to understand anything,” said Shoval.

It took him three days to find a flight home to Israel, on a plane filled with reservists called up to fight and others going to funerals.

“We were on a flight of tears,” he said.

Within days of October 7, Shoval received the news that David Cunio and his family had been taken hostage to Gaza.

He spoke to Sylvia Cunio, the Cunios’ mother, who told him what she knew.

“And she said, ‘Help us,’” said Shoval.

In the years since filming “Youth,” Shoval and the Cunios had been in touch sporadically when they had news to share. He attended the wedding of David Cunio and Sharon Alony, who met during the making of the film when Alony was hired to work on the public relations. They sent messages when their children were born.

At first, Shoval called everyone he knew in the film world, telling them that David Cunio, his one-time actor from “Youth,” had been taken hostage, and to share that widely.

He couldn’t bear to watch the film he’d made with David and Eitan Cunio because it showed a kidnapping, carried out by the brothers in the film as part of their scheme to solve their family’s debt.

“It gave me a pit in my stomach,” said Shoval.

Instead, he wanted to take any footage he could find and relate what was happening to David Cunio and his family, to show who he is and what kind of family he comes from, in all of its simplicity and modesty.

“I gathered all kinds of things that I wanted to tell David and Eitan, things that I’d never said,” said Shoval. “It was a little bit like a healing process, or trying to find some perspective for myself.”

He then got lucky and discovered the long-ago-filmed footage from the production company, as well as from video cameras they had given to the Cunio brothers.

“It was my luck that it was there, and I realized there was a film in that footage,” said Shoval, who received the permission of the Cunio family to use anything he found.

Part of the film includes footage of walks with Eitan Cunio through the ruins of Kibbutz Nir Oz, and hearing the harrowing story of his survival on October 7, in the sealed room of his burning home with his wife and young daughters.

“It was very weird and sad to be there without David,” said Shoval. “We’re all these brothers, we’re all tied together, I feel like our souls are connected. I went to see Eitan and there was this huge missing piece.”

It was a difficult, painful process, said Shoval, who had to figure out what to use, choosing to leave out some of the more horrifying footage from October 7 and to tell their story without it.

As the film was screened in Berlin, and ahead of additional screenings, the family received signs of life of David Cunio from some of the recently released hostages.

David and Ariel Cunio were not included in the list of 33 hostages in the first part of the current hostage deal, which is about to end.

Shoval is planning on showing the film to as many audiences as possible, following the first set of screenings in Berlin.

“It was more than 12 years ago that we showed ‘Youth’ here and every street I see now, I walked on with them,” he said.

“I just pray and hope that the deal won’t fall apart.”