Guy Gilboa-Dalal loves Japanese culture and was wearing a kimono at the Nova music festival when he was kidnapped more than 650 days ago by Hamas; his deep connection to Japan is celebrated in Guygu, a short animated film.
Guygu was created by Jordan Barr, co-founder of Studio Pixel in Tel Aviv, and was co-directed by Chen Heifetz with artistic design, in a modified anime style, by Lee Dror. It is available for free at the website, www.guygu.co/watch-now, with subtitles in English, Hebrew, and Japanese.
The film has been nominated for an Ophir Award and will be shown at the Jerusalem art and culture center HaMiffal on July 22.
A tribute to Gilboa-Dalal
Guygu is a loving tribute to Gilboa-Dalal, made with the active participation of his family, who spoke to the filmmakers about him and who recorded the narration for the film. The filmmakers began working on the movie over a year ago. “When we started on it, we thought, ‘It can take a year or so to make an animated film – there’s no way that something won’t have changed by then.’ But he’s still there,” said Barr. “It’s unbelievable.”
The film shows Gilboa-Dalal as a child who loved nature, music, and the anime series Naruto, which he would play-act at home. This love for anime flowered into a passion for all things Japanese, and he even learned the language.
Excited about the Nova festival, he attended it with his brother, Gal, but when the Hamas attack began, the two were separated. Gal escaped, but Guy was taken, and a video of him held captive by Nukhba terrorists was broadcast on October 7. Guy’s family saw the horrifying clip, and it is also shown briefly in Guygu.
The film then shifts back to animation and paints a picture of him alone in captivity, with his mother’s voice telling him, “Guygu, listen. If something happens to you, pound on your heart, and you’ll feel your mother’s love melting into your body, wrapping and padding your whole body. Then keep thinking of Dad, Gal, and [his sister] Gaya. Because you know we’re always around you. We’re your shield.”
“What caught my interest personally was what Merav, Guy’s mother, who is the heart of the family, said, that she had a feeling that something bad was going to happen, and she gave him instructions about what to do,” said Heifetz.
Throughout the film, cherry blossoms surround Gilboa-Dalal, and even in captivity, he imagines them and that he is in Japan on the trip he planned to take.
Signs of life
At the end, the film shows an image from the proof-of-life video of Gilboa-Dalal that was released in February, when he and his friend and fellow hostage, Evyatar David, were forced to watch Omer Shem-Tov, Eliya Cohen, and Omer Wenkert being freed as they begged for their lives.
They are among the more than 50 hostages still held in Gaza.
Barr screened the film at the end of a demonstration in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv in May to mark Gilboa-Dalal’s second birthday in captivity. He found it moving that tens of thousands of people at the demonstration stayed seven minutes to watch the entire film.
“We decided to show the picture of Guy there, in the car, and the words, ‘Guy is still there,’” said Barr. “And we ended it in a way that is a tiny bit optimistic, with a picture of him surrounded by his family, not with his curls, but with short hair, looking like he’s just been released.”
The filmmakers hope that this fantasy scene that ends the movie will soon become reality.