Last week, nearly 4,000 entertainment industry names, including Hollywood stars like Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix, signed a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli film institutions “complicit in war crimes” in Gaza. At last night’s Emmy Awards, Javier Bardem called for a “commercial and diplomatic blockade and sanctions on Israel.” Yet, many of the members of the country’s left-leaning film and TV industry are rooting for peace and standing against the Israeli government at their own risk.
On Tuesday, the Israeli Academy of Film and Television — which brings together nearly 1,100 filmmakers, producers and actors — is expected to submit “The Sea,” a heart-wrenching drama about a Palestinian boy who risks his life to go to the beach for the first time in Tel Aviv, for the Oscars international feature film race. “The Sea” is one of several fiercely anti-war films shortlisted, alongside Nadav Lapid‘s “Yes” and Netalie’s “Oxygen,” which were supported by Israel Film Fund.
That body, which stands as the country’s primary source of financing for Israeli and Palestinian films, is threatened by the boycott because it’s a public fund — even though it operates independently from the government. It has a long legacy of supporting films from liberal voices, such as Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir,” Samuel Maoz’s “Lebanon” and most recently “Yes,” which world premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and was described by Variety critic Guy Lodge as a “blistering attack on Israeli nationalism.”
A spokesperson for Film Workers for Palestine disputed that the Israel Film Fund operates independently from the government, saying in a statement, “If complicit Israeli film institutions like the Israel Film Fund, which partners with Israel’s far-right, genocidal Ministry of Culture and Sport, and several organizations involved in the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, including The Jerusalem Development Authority and the Jerusalem Foundation, wish to continue working with pledge signatories, their choice is clear: end complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid, and endorse the full rights of the Palestinian people under international law, in line with Palestinian civil society guidelines. To date, almost none has.”
“Festivals and funds face political pressure,” says Eliran Elya, an Israeli filmmaker who chairs the Israeli Directors Guild. “But they’ve maintained impressive creative independence, and continued to support works that are critical of the establishment.”
Under the local film law voted on more than 25 years ago, grants from the Israel Film Fund are allocated to filmmakers based on the artistic merit of their projects without interference from government officials. And unlike in France, where the National Film Board chief is appointed by the French government, the head of the Israel Film Fund — currently Noa Regev — is voted on by an independent selection committee.
“Along the years, if you see the harvest of films that came out of Israel, they’re the most critical of the Israeli society and are looking deep down into the conflict,” says Eitan Mansuri, a leading producer whose banner Spiro Films produced “Foxtrot” and, more recently, the series “No Man’s Land.”
Local festivals, too, have taken risks to show films that have displeased government officials. The Jerusalem Film Festival, 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 had 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 tells Variety.” 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 then, on top of that, industries abroad are boycotting Israeli creators.”
“We are hit both from inside and from outside,” adds Elya, who previously 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.”
Mansuri, who began protesting the Israeli government before the war even started, says that while he understands the need from the international community to make a strong statement, it’s “hurting the only people who are the voice of democracy, the voice of reason, the voice of liberalism, the voice of peace. That’s what you’re doing by boycotting the artists, the film and television community of Israel.”
There are also many 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.”
Mansuri argues that the people who will be hurt by the boycott “are those who are fighting to tell the stories of this conflict, those who are bringing those stories to the world for years now.”
Technically, 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” and 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.”
Lapid isn’t the only one who experienced rejection after Oct. 7. Israeli directors and producers are becoming increasingly reliant on local funding sources because international partners are getting cold feet, which Mansuri attributes mostly to fear of hurting their image or losing money, although there are also instances where the refusal to work with an Israeli is politically motivated. He says the backlash against Israel has reached such point that it might become even impossible to attract co-producers or financing from overseas.
“No one is saying it out loud, but it’s happening underground,” Mansuri says. “But I get it. I was a head of a film fund in Finland. I would say to myself, ‘OK, this Israeli co-production is brilliant, but if I come on board what does it say about me or about our film fund, and what heat would it bring on us if we collaborate with Israel now? It means that I’m choosing a side, right?’”
Although he could well suffer from the boycott, Lapid says he “truly applauds” the initiative of the petition. But, like other Israeli creatives, he fears it will have “zero impact” on the war because “people 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 very 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.”