{"id":21641,"date":"2025-09-17T10:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/21641\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T10:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:19:06","slug":"israeli-film-academy-awards-faces-government-defunding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/21641\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Film Academy Awards Faces Government Defunding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Israeli culture and sports minister Miki Zohar has vowed to cut funding for the Israeli Film Academy\u2019s Ophir Awards<\/a> after its top prize was given to \u201cThe Sea<\/a>,\u201d an Arabic-language drama about a Palestinian boy from the West Bank who risks his life to go to the beach in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

\n\tIsrael\u2019s top film honors, the Ophir Awards are voted on by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television which brings together nearly 1,100 filmmakers, producers and actors. In winning the Ophir\u2019s best film nod, \u201cThe Sea\u201d automatically qualified to represent Israel in the Oscars\u2019 international feature race. \u201cThe Sea,\u201d directed by Shai Carmeli Pollak and produced by Baher Agbariya, also won best screenplay, best actor for the 13-year old Palestinian star Muhammad Gazawi, best supporting actor for Khalifa Natour and best original score.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe scandalous victory of (\u2018The Sea\u2019) at the ceremony sparked outrage among many Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers who dedicate their lives to defending the homeland,\u201d Zohar wrote in a statement reported in the newspaper Hareetz. He added, \u201cThere is no greater spit in the face of Israeli citizens than the embarrassing and disconnected annual Ophir Awards ceremony. The fact that the winning film depicts our heroic soldiers in a defamatory and false way, while they are fighting and risking their lives to protect us, surprises no one anymore.\u201d The funding cut will be effective in 2026, he said. <\/p>\n

\n\tLast night\u2019s Ophir ceremony was emotionally and politically charged as many on stage urged the Israeli government to end the war in Gaza. Nearly every winner sported a black t-shirt with an anti-war message such as \u201ca child is a child is a child,\u201d while others had pictures of the hostages.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement issued after last night\u2019s Ophir ceremony, the chairman of the Israeli Film and Television Academy, Asaf Amir, addressed the relentless pressures from the Israeli government over the left-leaning cultural sector and calls for boycott from the international community. Just last week, nearly 4,000 entertainment industry names, including\u00a0Hollywood stars like Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix<\/a>, signed a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli film institutions \u201ccomplicit in war crimes\u201d in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the face of attacks by ministers in Israel\u2019s government on Israeli cinema, and calls from parts of the international film community to boycott us, the selection of this film is a resounding and decisive answer,\u201d said Amir. \u201cI am proud that an Arabic-language film, born out of collaboration between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, has been chosen to represent Israel in the Oscar competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t One of the institutions threatened by the boycott call is the Israel Film Fund which stands as the biggest local source of financing and has also been attacked by the Israeli government for funding a number of anti-war movies, such as \u201cThe Sea\u201d and Nadav Lapid\u2019s \u201cYes\u201d which played at Cannes\u2019 Directors Fortnight. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Palestinian teenager of \u201cThe Sea\u201d who won best actor, Mohammad Gzawi, said on stage, \u201cI wish for all the children of the world, everywhere, to have the same opportunity \u2014 to live and dream without wars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israeli culture and sports minister Miki Zohar has vowed to cut funding for the Israeli Film Academy\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,20146,17716,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-21641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-ophir-awards","tag-the-sea","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}