The latest film by Nadav Lapid, Israel’s most successful director internationally, will be included in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 57th Cannes Film Festival, which opens on May 14.
The film, Yes!, stars Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor, Alexey Serebryakov, and Naama Preis, Lapid’s wife. The synopsis of the film released by Cannes reads, “Y., a jazz musician struggling to make ends meet, and his wife Jasmine, a dancer, sell their art, souls, and bodies to the elite, and bring pleasure and consolation to a bleeding nation. Soon, Y. is given a mission of the highest importance: setting to music a new national anthem.”
The film is reportedly set in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, which led to the outbreak of the current war in Gaza.
Lapid’s previous film, Ahed’s Knee, which shared the Jury Prize with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, was shown in the main competition, the most prestigious section of the festival. Eyebrows were raised among those who watch the Israeli film scene closely when the program for the main competition and most other sections was announced earlier this month, and Lapid’s Yes! was not in it.
'Unofficial cultural boycott'
Some spoke off the record, saying that they feared that the exclusion of the new film by Lapid, 50, was a sign that even politically active directors on the left like Lapid were being frozen out of international competitions, in a kind of unofficial cultural boycott.
But the addition of the film seems to rectify that omission, although it’s common for directors who have won a major prize in the main competition to continue to show their films in that section, not in the Directors’ Fortnight.
Before Ahed’s Knee, Lapid was at Cannes with The Kindergarten Teacher, which was shown in Critics’ Week in 2014. It was later remade in English with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Synonyms, another film by Lapid, won the Golden Bear, the top prize at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, in 2019.
In December 2023, Lapid joined 50 directors from around the world in signing a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of the hostages, and the establishment of humanitarian corridors.
Another Israeli film included in film festival
One other Israeli film, Or Sinai’s Mama, was selected as a Cannes Special Screenings title in the Official Selection, the festival announced Wednesday. The film, which is in Hebrew and Polish, tells the story of a woman who has a secret romance in a beachfront home and has to go back to her family in a Polish village.
It stars Evgenia Dodina, originally from Soviet Belarus, who is one of Israel’s most successful stage and screen actresses. She has appeared in films such as One Week and a Day and in television series that include the original Israeli version of the television series, Your Honor. Arkadiusz Jakubik, Katarzyna Lubik, and Dominika Bednarczyk also appear in the movie.
Like Lapid, Sinai studied at Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. She won the Cannes Cinefondation prize in 2016 for her short film, Anna.
