The suffocation of Israeli filmmakers: ‘Critical culture is now regarded as an act of treason’

In September 2025, the film that won the most awards at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s equivalent of Spain’s Goyas, was The Sea, which tells the story of a Palestinian boy who sneaks past checkpoints to try to reach Tel Aviv and see the Mediterranean for the first time. The film does not delve into the daily squalor and violence of the Israeli occupation, but it provoked the ire of Culture Minister Miki Zohar at the time, who said he would not allow a “group of extremist left‑wing thugs” to take over the film sector.

A year later, Zohar is calling for the revocation of the citizenship of Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, directors of the film NAZA, which won awards in Venice and is screening at the San Sebastián Film Festival (September 18-26). He called them traitors. On Israel’s streets and on social media, anger toward the two filmmakers has gone even further. “We’ve had hard years, but this is the first time I’ve witnessed attacks of such cruelty on social media and even in some media outlets. People are calling for them to be hanged, for them to be killed. It’s incredible,” Uri Rosenwaks, a filmmaker and former director of the Israeli forum for documentary directors, told this newspaper. “The problem is that Israeli society lives in a huge bubble of denial about what is happening in Gaza. And this film has burst that bubble.”

The filmmakers interviewed for this report describe a gradual strangulation over the past 10 years, sheltered by increasingly extremist governments and an unabashed radicalism that has clearly intensified since the start of Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip in 2023, following the attacks by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

They all live in an environment of lack of funding, canceled screenings, rejection by festivals, scorn from the authorities, and insults and threats on social media. “It seems we have reached the point where critical culture is regarded as an act of treason and is becoming dangerous for those who create it,” laments Shai Carmeli‑Pollak, director of The Sea.

More than 200 Israeli filmmakers signed a statement last week in solidarity with Abraham and Szor. NAZA collects testimony from more than 20 soldiers and intelligence officers who detail the tools used to relentlessly bombard Gaza and the sense of revenge that has permeated the offensive. The film attacks the army head‑on — a kind of sacred cow in Israel, where it is seen as a model of morality.

“This is a true collective psychosis,” Carmeli‑Pollak sums up. “It seems the fact that the film received such a prolonged ovation bothers local audiences more than the disturbing facts the story exposes. It’s deeply disheartening and terrifying.”

The 25‑minute ovation NAZA received in Venice might lead one to think that it is still possible in Israel to make films critical of the current government and that culture, in all its forms, remains an effective channel for denouncing the occupation of Palestinian territories, the massacre in Gaza, or the army’s abuses.

But the reality is that NAZA is a film that has not received a cent from public coffers, has not been released in Israel, and it seems clear that, for now, no Israeli theater would risk screening it. It is not even certain that its directors will be able to return home in the medium term. “Before, only people from the radical right allowed themselves to attack a film like this, which, moreover, they hadn’t seen. But now the criticism comes from everywhere: academics, more moderate figures... It has been brutal,” Rosenwaks says.

The biggest fear among these artists is what will happen if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power after the legislative elections at the end of October. “One can oppose Netanyahu and critique him openly, but attacking the army or speaking about Palestinians’ rights has become very risky. Not only for our careers, but for our physical safety,” says Noam Sheizaf, co‑director with Idit Avrahami of H2: The Occupation Lab, a film about the Palestinian city of Hebron, presented as a microcosm of the occupation.

At the same time, Israeli artists — not only filmmakers but also writers, dancers, intellectuals, and historians — are received with suspicion abroad or directly face boycotts. “We Israelis have become toxic people. Our presence at a conference, a film festival, or a book fair can create problems,” Rosenwaks details. “And if Netanyahu is re‑elected we won’t be able to cope. There will be a mass emigration, because the last few years have already been a challenge."

Self‑censorship

In Israel, film directors do not receive funds directly from the Ministry of Culture. Each year, the government provides about 130 million shekels (roughly $42 million) to film funds — independent non‑profit entities — that decide which films to finance according to certain criteria. “There are no guidelines about the political or ideological content of the films they back, but repeated attacks by the authorities on critical films have undoubtedly created a deterrent effect,” admits Nirit Anderman, a film‑specialist journalist at Haaretz. In other words, organizations that receive public money have understood that financing a film critical of government policies toward the Palestinians will not be well-regarded and could exclude them from the list of cultural entities that receive those funds.

That is why self‑censorship is a reality among artists, although few admit it openly. “Obviously, if a filmmaker is torn between making a family drama or a scathing political satire, he or she will choose the former because he or she knows that the chances of securing funding will be greater,” Anderman says.

After the success of The Sea at the Ophir Awards in 2025, the culture minister threatened to stop funding those awards, although he has not succeeded in doing so. He also announced the creation of other government‑backed awards, which were held in December and distributed substantial prizes, and proposed new rules for public funding of Israeli cinema that are still being refined. For example, that awards won at foreign festivals would not count toward eligibility for funds, or that a specific funding line be created for films about the heroism of Israeli soldiers.

The minister, Miki Zohar, has long had critical filmmakers in his sights and said, for example, that the Oscar‑winning documentary No Other Land, co‑directed precisely by Abraham and Szor, was “an act of sabotage” against the State of Israel. On September 9, at the most recent Ophir Awards, the big winner was Tell Me Everything, a family drama set in the 1980s that has homophobia and AIDS as its backdrop, followed by Where To, which deals with relations between Israelis and Palestinians but is set in Berlin, far from the harsh daily reality of the occupied territories.

“In my case, after the minister’s attacks, some people criticized the film, but others were curious and went to see it. Also, there were screenings canceled due to opposition from local residents,” says Carmeli‑Pollak, director of The Sea, who secured difficult funding thanks to support from the Israeli Film Fund, an independent non‑profit, and a Palestinian production company.

In 2022, Sheizaf and Avrahami, the directors of the film about Hebron, also saw several screenings canceled and the film go almost unnoticed in Israel. “As an Israeli documentary filmmaker, I make films for the people of my country, so they can see and understand. I’m a journalist, and I believe in this work,” Sheizaf adds, explaining that since it was a co-production with France Télévisions, there were screenings abroad. “We were very happy about that because we believe the world has a role to play in ending the occupation.”

Along the same lines, Avi Mograbi, director of The First 54 Years. An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation, explains that “everyone” rejected his film in Israel in 2022, months before the Hamas attacks. “The television channels that used to show my films, the festivals, the cultural institutions where I was once well received... all of them,” he says. “Sometimes being ignored is more painful than being criticized.”

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