“I can’t explain the massive explosion. I felt I was flying in the air. It was crazy.”
For Michal Weits, acclaimed Israeli documentary producer and artistic director of Docaviv, the horror of war came crashing into her family home just after dawn. On 22 June, a ballistic missile fired from Iran hit her Tel Aviv house while she, her husband, and two young children sheltered inside. Moments later, the building was gone.
“Everything – no house. It was just a pile of nothing,” she told Jewish News in an interview following the attack.
The strike, part of a wave of Iranian retaliation against Israel, came months after the release of We Will Dance Again, the BBC documentary Weits produced about Nova festival survivors returning to the massacre site to reclaim joy through dance.
On that Sunday morning, she said, she’d just woken up. “I opened my phone and I saw that the United States attacked in Iran and everybody is now waiting for some kind of harsh reaction,” she recalled. “I kind of got that feeling that we need to stay at home, close to the shelter.”
Aftermath of the missile. Courtesy of Michal
Within minutes, her instincts proved right. After ushering her daughter into the safe room – which also doubled as a utility space – the sirens sounded.
“We all, the four of us, got into the safe room,” she said. “I heard booms very far away… I thought, Okay – like the other times – we are going through it, and it will be over in 10 minutes.”
She sat beneath the safe room window, scrolling through her phone. “Suddenly everything became dark. No electricity.”
I can’t explain the massive explosion. It was so huge… I felt that I was flying in the air.
Weits believes she blacked out. Her daughter was the first to speak after the blast, her partner later told her: “What happened to us? Everything fell apart.”
The family’s safe room, intended to shield them, had become a trap. “The dryer exploded on me. A lot of things in the same room fell on me,” she said. “We noticed that things were on fire… We were afraid that the house was going to collapse or burn.”
The missile had struck just two metres away.
Aftermath of the rocket strike. Courtesy of Michal
Rescue teams arrived within minutes. “The happy moment was to find out that we, all four of us, were alive,” she said. “We went out of our house in pyjamas. We had nothing… My family came to help us, buying new clothes and a toothbrush and just basic equipment that we need.”
Weits suffered facial injuries, hearing loss in her left ear, and remains in recovery. “I have a lot of stitches, and I guess there will be scars one day,” she said. “The doctor told me that if the ear won’t heal itself, I will have to do surgery.”
But the trauma, she says, goes deeper than the physical wounds. “It took my body three days to calm down. My body was still shaking.”
I’m in trauma and I have to take care of my kids. They went through a big trauma. It’s very difficult.
“They ask me all the time, ‘Mummy, are you keeping us safe?’”
The family is now living temporarily in a hotel.
Weits, 46, is a central figure in Israeli documentary cinema. In addition to We Will Dance Again and Golda’s War Diaries, she directed the award-winning film Blue Box and became Docaviv’s artistic director in 2024. The festival confirmed her injuries in a public statement, saying: “Michal is strong and receiving great support from her family, colleagues, and friends.”
The Nova Festival on October 7 2023 (copyright BBC Storyville)
Weits also shared a brief message through the festival: “I’m just filled with a deep sense of gratitude that’s stronger and greater than any injury I have. I look at the photos of our home completely destroyed, reduced to a pile of dust, and the safe room that’s barely standing, and I still can’t believe it.”
She told Jewish News she’s already preparing for the next edition of the festival. “I’m planning to go back to work as soon as I can. I’m starting to plan the next edition,” she said.
Asked whether the experience has changed her outlook on life and war, Weits replied: “I don’t think it has changed anything. Since 7 October, I was kind of shocked that nothing happened to me or my family or close friends. Because everybody in this country was somehow hurt from the beginning of the war. So, it was really strange that it passed above us.”
“For me it was, okay, you can never run from this kind of a disaster. It’s part of life in Israel.”
Weits added: “We just want our life back… Enough. Enough.”
