For the Israeli director, the punchline has become reality over the past year as he’s fought to release Yes, a satire of the post Oct. 7 Israel,  a film that has drawn fire from both nationalist hardliners and pro-Palestinian activists.

Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, has condemned Lapid and the film for disgracing “our pure and sanctified IDF soldiers.” Others have criticized the director for taking Israeli state money — Yes was partially financed by the Israeli Film Fund — making him a complicit.

He has interrogated his own Israeli identity and the role of art in the face of state power in Synonyms, which won the 2019 Berlin Fest Golden Bear, and follows an Israeli soldier who flees to Paris to escape a legacy of nationalism.

 Ahed’s Knee, winner of Cannes’  2021 Jury Prize, centers on a filmmaker confronting censorship and political coercion in a remote desert town.

The new film follows Y., a jazz musician (Ariel Bronz), and wife Yasmin (Efrat Dor), a dancer, who, out of financial need and exhaustion, surrender to Israel’s socio-political and military elite. After years of resistance, they decide to submit–to say yes.

At a bacchanalian house party for IDF elites, Y. performs a frenzied routine — fellating a baguette, then facing off in a dance battle with military generals as La Bouche’s “Be My Lover” blasts. Later, the couple lick the boots of a Russian oligarch.

Y. is eventually commissioned to compose a new national anthem — an update of a classic Hebrew song with lyrics calling for the destruction of Gaza: “In one year there will be nothing left living there. We’ll annihilate them all.”

The song is not parody. It is taken word-for-word from a real composition by the anti-Palestinian activist group Civic Front. In the film’s closing, Lapid juxtaposes it with footage of children singing the lyrics in a staged music video.

Returning from France to Israel, he found an artistic community mobilized in response. “They were directing, editing, shooting films showing the atrocities of Hamas,” he recalls. “Pop singers went to sing for the soldiers. They were shocked by the attack and convinced they were working to heal injured society. But on top of everything was written in huge red letters: ‘Revenge.’ ‘Vengeance.’”

That reality, and the scale of Israel’s military response, with figures published by medical journal The Lancet estimating that more than 75,000 killed in Gaza, intrudes directly into Yes.

Push notifications of the dead flash across Y.’s phone; he swipes them away. Later, seeking inspiration, he travels to the border and climbs Golani Hill overlooking Gaza, a landscape of rubble beneath a cloud of black smoke.

Making the film proved as fraught as its subject. “Dozens” of Israeli technicians refused to work on it, Lapid says. “The actors were afraid.” Securing insurance to shoot near the Gaza border amid ongoing strikes was huge problem. Days before filming began, a missile attack hit Tel Aviv. Members of the French crew, just flown in from Paris, spent hours sheltering in bunkers.

When Yes premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, it drew critcal acclaim, but failed to secure distribution.

“Distributors would email me telling me how much they love the movie, but also why they are afraid to release it,” Lapid says. “At one festival, a major European distributor insisted we meet somewhere discreet, so people wouldn’t see us together. Like I was a forbidden lover.”

The reaction was often fierce among those who hadn’t seen it: “The biggest amount of rage came from people who refused to watch the movie.”

The screening at the Jerusalem Film Fest prompted calls from government officials to remove it from the program for “opening the wounds of Israeli society.” It went on to receive seven Ophir Award nominations, Israel’s Oscars, including for best picture and best director.

In August, New York-based distributor Kino Lorber acquired American rights. They’re releasing Yes in U.S. theaters on March 27.

“There’s something refreshing about a distributor which is not afraid. Cinema was born in this kind of courage.”

Shooting without authorization near the Gaza border, Lapid and his crew were minutes into filming when the army moved in. Then something unexpected happened. A young Israeli officer began asking questions — about cameras, about framing about how a film is made. Hours passed. Instead of shutting them down, he stalled his superiors, buying the production time.

When Lapid approached him for one last shot, the soldier pushed back. “It’s war time. Your shooting is over.” Lapid told him: maybe now war feels like the only thing that matters. One day, it might be film.  The officer hesitated, and then 10 more minutes.

“From time to time,” Lapid says, “I think — if this guy becomes a filmmaker, what kind of story will he tell? And at the same time … he might be one of the first filmmakers who took part in a genocide.”