(27 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York City – 19 May 2025
1. Establishing shot of rescued hostage Andrei Kozlov arranging his brushes
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Andrei Kozlov, rescued Hamas hostage:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 1, 3, 4++
“My grandmother, she was telling me that she has some guardian angel above her, like somewhere. He kept her alive in war camps, he kept her alive during her life, and she’s been in really bad situations. And she is sure that she has a guardian angel. So when I was there, I was asking the same guardian angel to look after me. Maybe if you rescue my grandmother, maybe you also can do something for me, please.”
3. Zoom in of sign on wall reading “Andrei Kozlov, “So real surreal””
4. One of Kozlov’s paintings on display that he called “The gift”
5. One of Kozlov’s paintings on display that shows where he was kept in the beginning that he called “One God”
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Andrei Kozlov, rescued Hamas hostage:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 5, 7++
“I don’t think that I will paint a lot of about Gaza, like maybe a few more, just to tell the craziest stories that are inside of these eight months. And then I will move to something more colorful, more happy.”
7. One of Kozlov’s paintings on display that he called “The other part of the mirror”
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Andrei Kozlov, rescued Hamas hostage:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOT 9++
“It’s a good way how to, how to become somebody else. Not just former hostage who spent eight months in Gaza and was rescued."
9. Kozlov hanging his painting “The other part of the mirror”
STORYLINE:
You’d be forgiven for looking around Andrei Kozlov’s studio, dotted with paintings inspired by his eight months as a hostage of Hamas, and seeing only darkness — canvases splashed with grey and ochre, guns tucked into waistbands or resting against a wall, moments of angst and disbelief and pain.
He is a free man now, though, who often lets a wide smile spread across his face, who can’t believe his luck of surviving it all, and who urges you to look further.
A painting of a blackened street his captors led him down is drowned in darkness, but in the distance is a sliver of cerulean sky. A screaming man’s reflection is caught, but it’s in a mirror on a bubble gum-pink wall. A house beside barren trees is seen in the desolation of night, but its windows glow with lamplight.
“It’s a good way how to, how to become somebody else,” the 28-year-old Kozlov says, standing in a shared art studio he works at in the Hudson Yards neighbourhood of New York, "not just former hostage who spent eight months in Gaza and was rescued."
Kozlov grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, but had long felt a sense of wanderlust. After serving a mandatory year in the military, he decided he wanted to live in Israel, arriving in August 2022 and taking part in Masa, a gap-year programme that included an internship in motion design at a Tel Aviv company.
His life was carefree, reflected in Instagram posts of beaches, biking, surfing, road-tripping and otherwise enjoying the days of a relaxed, unemployed 20-something.
That ended on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Kozlov had picked up a job working security at the Tribe of Nova music festival in southern Israel close to the Gaza border, barely sleeping in two nights keeping watch for ticketless intruders.
He sent no messages to his family. He was sure he would survive. He’d be home by night, he thought.
Soon, though, Kozlov was in Gaza, tied with rope. Reality set in. Guns were aimed and blows were delivered. He was certain he knew what would come next.
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