He swore to himself that his next film would not be about Israel.
His script, titled “Yes”, was ready to go into pre-production; He was already considering potential Hollywood actors to star in the lead roles of two artists who sell their art, soul and body to the rich and powerful.
But then 7 October 2023 came.
The Israeli filmmaker living in Paris returned to his country shortly after the Hamas terrorist attacks. He felt deep sympathy for the suffering of his family and friends, but based on the language used by politicians at the time, he could also predict that the state’s revenge would be of “biblical proportions”, as he said at the Berlin premiere of his film, which is now showing in cinemas across Germany.
Lapid revised his script within a few weeks to reflect the unfolding events. “The movie was going on all around me,” he said.
‘Answering madness with madness’
The filmmaker says the resulting work serves as a witness to a specific moment in history. Plus, it’s a “fiction film on steroids”; A work that “answers madness with madness,” as Lapid describes it.
But even the most cartoonish and experimental scenes – such as a high-ranking official’s head turning into a video player showing the horrors of war – feel like “a neo-realist film” to Israelis, the filmmaker says.
Meanwhile, no computer-generated imagery was needed to convey what was happening in Gaza; A sequence of actual images of Palestinian enclaves under bombardment are shown in the background as the two stand on a hilltop next to the Israeli border.
Lapid says that such scenes were shot without permission and the entire production was filmed under the radar. He had difficulty finding a cast and crew willing to work on the film.
The lead actor, Ariel Bronze, is a provocative performance artist who made headlines a few years ago for wearing an Israeli flag on her buttocks during a show on freedom of expression.
Even though “Yes” was partially funded by the Israeli state, the country’s main distributors refused to pick up the film, including distribution of Lapid’s previous films. “They didn’t even want to look at it,” says Lapid.
Currently, it has been screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and an independent release is being planned for Israel.
When a selfish elite supports nationalist ideology
Y. and Jasmine, the main characters of “Yes”, are struggling artists by day and debauched entertainers by night. Their act is an insider’s tip shared by Tel Aviv’s ultra-wealthy: hire the couple to perform among your select guests, cocktails and artwork, and your party will transform into an orgiastic event pulsating with Eurotrash beats.
One of the artworks visible at the party in the opening sequence is Georg Grosz’s “Pillars of Society” (1926), a painting that portrays Germany’s elite as promiscuous and selfish supporters of nationalism.
Through his satire, Grosz offered a preliminary verdict on the state of Germany’s institutions, predicting how supporting corrupt and hypocritical institutions would pave the way for the rise of Nazism and a future of unparalleled destruction.
“The painting was the genesis of the film,” the Israeli director told DW. Lapid recalled being obsessed with artwork as a young child and explained that the style of painting informed his view of cinema, which he describes as “modern expressionism”.
And for him, “you don’t need a Nobel Prize” to see the parallels between the pillars of German society in 1926 and the elite of Tel Aviv almost a century later.
This statement applies to many scenes in the film. Lapid integrates explicit symbols and imagery in “Yes”, reflecting his view that nuance has been missing from Israeli discourse.
The intense nationalism can be felt by the ubiquity of Israeli flags at every public event. And the humble Y literally licks the boots of his wealthy patron, an oligarch who orders the composer to write a powerful new hymn for post-war Israel.
An inflammatory video as the centerpiece of the film
The resulting anthem, composed by Y, is revealed via a video of Israeli children casually singing lyrics that predict a massacre in Gaza within a year: “In another year, there will be nothing” and “We will destroy them all.”
This song has a disturbing real-life backstory. That video was actually released in November 2023 by a PR firm run by Ofer Rosenbaum, founder of “The Civilian Front Movement,” which claims to be “apolitical” on its website and whose stated goal is to restore support for the Israeli military. Under the title “Friendship Song 2023”, it sets new lyrics to a canonic song, “Hareut” (1949) by the Israeli poet Haim Gouri, which is often performed at memorial ceremonies in Israel, as it commemorates fallen soldiers and friends.
The PR video, which featured “Yes”, was shared widely on social media, and was even posted (and later removed) by the Israeli state-owned TV channel, Kan.
Lapid openly admits that his proposal in “Yes” is more radical than any petition from pro-Palestinian organizations.
The filmmaker points out that long before international experts began accusing Israel of committing genocide, he had already written into his script in November 2023 that “Israel’s national anthem is genocide” — as a symbol of “the musical essence of the people,” he tells DW.
He is well aware that only an Israeli can credibly put forward such a radical argument: “I dig into this collective soul, which is also mine.”
Edited by: Brenda Haas and Felix Tamsut
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