When student filmmaker Omri Koren met families evacuated from Kibbutz Kfar Aza in the weeks after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, he was gathering information about those considered missing.

He encountered the Shamriz family, whose 26-year-old son and brother, Alon, was taken hostage from the Gaza border town and began documenting their journey to secure his release. Two months later, he managed to escape captivity along with fellow hostages Yotam Haim and Samer Talalka. But the three were subsequently gunned down by Israeli troops who mistook them for terror operatives.

Now, Koren’s 36-minute film, “Alon, My Brother the Hero,” is one of 15 semifinalists for the Student Academy Awards presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and an awards ceremony is planned for October in New York.

“It feels more valuable in this period,” said Koren, referring to Israeli films being turned away from festivals and award ceremonies as part of growing global anti-Israel sentiment. “It warmed my heart that people outside Israel watched the film and that it had an impact — that they felt something.”

Like many Israeli filmmakers, Koren volunteered in the weeks after the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, combing through photos and videos to identify and create a definitive list of known hostages.

Koren, a student at Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, first met the Shamriz family at a Friday pick-up soccer game in Kibbutz Shefayim in central Israel, where Kfar Aza residents had been evacuated several weeks earlier on October 7.

“I was in shock. Here is this community with people who are missing and dead and almost all of them said to me, ‘If we don’t play this Friday game, then we’ve already lost,'” said Koren. “It just amazed me and I wanted to document the game.”

He didn’t know any of the families, but met Dikla Shamriz, who told him she had two sons on the field, Yonatan and Ido, and a third son held hostage, Alon, as well as a younger daughter.

“I said, ‘Then what are you doing here?'” said Koren, seemingly perplexed that the hostage mother was able to function.

“‘If I’m not here, then I’ve lost,'” Koren recalled Dikla having replied.

Koren decided to accompany Dikla in the family’s day-to-day efforts to gain more information about Alon, who was taken hostage from the community’s young people’s neighborhood, along with 18 others from Kfar Aza.

Initially, there were many photographers and reporters around the family, and the Shamrizes didn’t differentiate between Koren and the others.

But he gradually began working more closely with the family, documenting their missions, appearances and journeys; with the idea of eventually showing Alon what they had done to bring him home, once he was released from captivity.

The journey started in Israel, but they quickly found themselves outside the country as the Shamrizes globalized the campaign for Alon’s release. “Yonatan would tell me they were going to Paris, and I would find myself buying a ticket at the last minute,” Koren said.

The film shows snippets of those trips, of Yonatan entering the French parliament, talks with UN officials, and grabbing a quick bite to eat in a cab.

“We thought it would take a month [until all of the hostages were released], and then we thought three months, but certainly not almost two years, or that it would end for him the way it did,” he said.

At first, it was a passion project, said Koren, but it turned into his graduate student film as the story shifted, and the tragedy of Alon’s death.

The film extends past Alon’s killing, following the family as they cope with its aftermath, including their brother and son’s painfully sad funeral and burial held at Kibbutz Shefayim.

“It was very clear that I wasn’t leaving the family, and they were okay with me continuing to film,” said Koren.

Within the brief 36 minutes of the film, Koren shows the family evolving after Alon’s death, with the oldest brother Yonatan speaking in front of thousands at an anti-government protest in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square and then at the circumcision ceremony of his newborn son the winter after Alon was killed.

“As a person on this journey with them, I experienced the pressure and stress and fear. But I also didn’t know Alon,” said Koren, who is 29, similar in age to Alon and his brothers. “I mourned him, and still do. But he was a person whom I didn’t know. I got to know him from those closest to him, but what I went through is nothing compared to their grief.”

“Alon, My Brother the Hero,” was created and produced by the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, with the support of the New Fund for Israeli Cinema and TV. It was finished a few days before it was screened on Israel’s Yes Documentary channel — timed with the first anniversary of the October 7 onslaught.

The premiere screening was held at Kfar Aza’s temporary kibbutz pub in Shefayim, after the Shamriz family had viewed the film several times and offered their comments.

Koren said he had no idea that the Sam Spiegel film school was sending his short to the Student Academy Awards.

Receiving the Student Academy Awards semi-finalist designation was emotional and exciting.

“The world doesn’t love us right now, and to my despair, I sometimes understand why,” said Koren, apparently referring to Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.

The young filmmaker is working on his next film, another short — this one a dark comedy that also deals with loss.

“I think that’s pretty much my life right now, using humor to deal with dark things,” he said. “I learned that from the Shamrizes. They’re people with a great sense of humor, and what they try to do is laugh at the end of the day. You can’t always, and you don’t always want to, but it’s my new approach.”