Local festivals have taken risks to show films that have displeased government officials. The Jerusalem Film Fest, which is also directly threatened by the boycott, recently showed Yes in spite of pushback from local politicians.
“A few days before the screening, Jerusalem festival organizers received a letter from two government ministers who demanded that it be taken off the lineup, saying that it mocks or despises or shows no respect for Israeli patriotism and heroism — all sorts of nonsense,” Lapid says. ”The Jerusalem festival could have pulled my film at that point, and blamed it on the politicians, but they took the risk, knowing that it could also lead to the closure of the festival.”
Elya laments that “filmmakers in Israel are already facing limitations” and threats of censorship “because the funding is public. And on top of that, industries abroad are boycotting Israeli creators.”
Rainbow
“We are hit both from inside and from outside,” adds Elya, who directed the film “Rainbow” about his own experience as an IDF soldier. “My goal was to show the difficult consequences of war. For me, art is meant to open a conversation. It’s a way to bridge and to look for solutions to crises, not to make them worse.”
Israeli and Palestinian Artists
There are also some bridges between Israeli creatives and Palestinian artists. “The biggest collaborations are happening on an artistic level, in film and TV,” says Mansuri, citing projects like “Paradise Now,” “Ajami,” “Tzimaon,” “Our Boys,” “Tel Aviv on Fire” and “In Between.”
Lapid’s film could face a boycott from distributors and festivals because it received financing from the Israel Film Fund. It would be ironic since Lapid, who has lived in Paris for a number of years, is one of the most vocal opponents of the Israeli government.
The reality is that in spite of having previously won the Golden Bear in Berlin with “Synonym” and a prize at Cannes with “Ahed’s Knee,” Lapid struggled to finance his latest film “Yes.”
He submitted his script to the Israel Film Fund in 2022 to get the project off the ground.
Working with French producer Judith-Lou Levy, he had raised almost 60% of the financing outside of Israel when the war in Gaza broke out and most of it collapsed overnight. Ultimately, a second French producer, Hugo Selignac at Chi-Fou-Mi, stepped in during post-production and brought in $1 million to complete the financing.
“From Oct. 7 onwards, everything closed off and was blocked. Because it’s a film that takes real risks, everything became inaccessible,” Lapid says. “People didn’t want to deal with it — not being of an ideological position but because of their fear. It was like people who see a mouse and climb on a chair and scream.”
Although he could well suffer from the boycott, Lapid says he “truly applauds the fact that there are thousands of women and men in the film industry who are concerned about the fate of the Gazans.” But like other creatives, he fears “the petition will have zero impact on the war because in Israel don’t care what Emma Stone thinks and they don’t care about the fate of the Israeli film industry, apart from a few very popular comedies which are not intended to go abroad.”
Lapid wishes dissident Israeli filmmakers would be treated the same as Russian or Iranian directors, and argues that the filmmakers are seen as complicit to war crimes because of the gray area that stems from “a lack of political sanctions against Israel.”
“I think Israel should have been sanctioned in the same way that Russia has been sanctioned, and that should not be done by Emma Stone but by Emmanuel Macron,” he says, suggesting that had Israel been sanctioned, local filmmakers who are seeking international partners and festival slots would be perceived differently.
“What is happening with Israeli cinema is the consequence of the impunity that Israel has enjoyed on a political level,” he says. “Since European political leaders are doing nothing, the Israeli festival directors and fund directors are caught between a feeling that something must be done and pressure from a certain audience.”
Michal Aviram, who lives in Portugal and is one of the writers of global hit series “Fauda,” says the call for boycott could isolate the local film and TV community, which is already alienated from the Israeli government. “We need international help to stop the war,” she says.
“People who signed the petition don’t understand that they are playing to the hands of the Israeli government, which keeps trying to take funds away from all those foundations and wants to shut down Docaviv and the Jerusalem Festival because they have been criticized by the government and are expressed the suffering of our ‘enemies,’” Aviram adds.
Just a couple days ago, news broke in the local newspaper Hareetz that the Israeli Foreign Ministry had frozen the budget for international cooperation and public relations. The cut will be detrimental to the Israeli cultural sector which has looked to build bridges with the international film community, says a senior Israeli industry figure who preferred to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
“This goes to show how we’re being snatched from both sides, and how the Israeli government will take the opportunity to isolate us even further,” the source says.
Quoted in Hareetz, a senior official in the foreign ministry said the budget cut is a “kind of suicide” because it will limit contacts with the few people that are still willing to work with Israel. “You are closing the door even to those who are willing to work with us,” he told the local outlet.
Silencing Israeli artists and filmmakers could also lead to more intolerance and bias within Israeli society, suggests Aviram.
“In Israel, if you don’t want to see what’s going on in Gaza, you won’t,” she says. “You don’t see it in the mainstream media. So the work of artists is vital and it’s important not to shut us out, to communicate with the people of Israel. We need to work together.”
