Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s fifth feature Yes, which world premieres in Directors’ Fortnight on May 22, carries an ironic title for a film the director himself never thought he would make. After Ahed’s Knee won the Cannes Competition jury prize in 2021, Lapid tells Screen International, “I hopped on a plane and left Israel to move to Paris. In my mind, it was the last Israeli film I planned to make.”
That same year, Lapid began penning a script “about a couple of artists prostituting themselves and selling their bodies and souls and art, only saying yes in a world where it is no longer possible to say no”.
Then October 7, 2023 happened, the day Hamas led a deadly terrorist attack against Israel, and everything changed for Lapid. “October 7 trapped me,” he says. “It proved to me that I can physically leave Israel, but, as an Israeli filmmaker, I can never run away from the war — it will follow me.”
So Lapid went back to his original Yes script and reworked it, adding a more politically charged edge. “When you see your country is in the worst point of its history and is committing the worst crimes, what else can you do than try to find an audiovisual way to express that?” he says.
Yes — titled Ken in Hebrew — still centres on a jazz musician and his dancer wife, who sell their art, souls and bodies to the elite, and who are tasked with creating a new national anthem in a post-October 7 Israel. Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor and Naama Preis star in the film, which Lapid describes as “a musical tragedy — it’s a movie about a guy who wants to be the hero of a musical and finds himself instead the hero of a political drama”.
Before rewriting the script, Lapid had already reteamed for Yes with Ahed’s Knee producer Judith Lou Lévy, whose Paris-based Les Films du Bal had brought on financiers including France’s Arte and Les Films du Losange (which is handling French distribution and global sales), and Germany’s Komplizen Film and ZDF/Arte. After October 7, however, finding the funding in France was nearly impossible, says Lévy. “It was too Israeli for some and too political for others — a real Catch-22,” she explains, adding that they could not secure CNC funding.
“For many financiers, the film is too sensitive, too controversial,” says Lapid. “Let’s just say that courage is not the predominant policy of humanity at this point in time.”
Another issue was that the budget kept rising due to inflation and the added risk of filming while the conflict escalated in the region. At $4.5m (€4m), it is the most expensive film Lapid has made, more than double Ahed’s Knee’s budget of $2m (€1.8m). As the scale of the project widened, Thomas Alfandari’s Israel-
based production company Bustan Films came on board to handle local logistics, while Mediawan-owned production powerhouse Chi-Fou-Mi boarded last May to provide $1.1m (€1m) in gap financing.
“Broadcasters were scared of the political subject and Nadav denouncing what was happening in his country,” says Chi-Fou-Mi’s Antoine Lafon, who joined Lévy as a producer on the project alongside his business partner Hugo Sélignac. “We naively took on the risk thinking Canal+ would come on, but even they thought it was too politically sensitive and many financiers, a year after October 7, thought it was still too early to make a film like this.”
Lévy adds: “Without Chi-Fou-Mi, we couldn’t have made the film — I have met few companies as intrepid as they are. There is so much fear in terms of financing and creating today, and they took a huge risk in taking on the gap financing, finding solutions along the way and seeing this through to the end.”
Chi-Fou-Mi’s frequent co-production partner, Alain Attal’s Trésor Films, came in with an additional $350,000 (€300,000) to keep the project afloat. As the Israel-Gaza conflict escalated with no foreseeable end in sight, the production opted to shoot more than half of the film in Cyprus, benefiting from its tax shelter.
Unlike Ahed’s Knee, and despite subject matter that is overtly critical of the Israeli government, the producers were also able to secure funding from Israel Film Fund, an independent public fund designed to support local filmmakers. Eurimages, the cultural support fund of the Council of Europe, was also part of the financing package.
Crewing up
Once funding was in place, a new challenge presented itself. “It was hard to find people who weren’t afraid to make it,” says Lapid. While the filmmakers had originally planned to hire high-level crew and HoDs from across Europe, in the end the risk was too great so the film went with an entirely Israeli crew. Even that, however, was not straightforward, given the film’s anti-government stance. “For the first time in my life, Israeli crew members didn’t want to work on my film,” says Lapid. “In the end, we had to bring a makeup artist from Serbia because we discovered Israeli makeup artists are extremely patriotic. A second assistant director told me, ‘I will never be able to look at myself in the mirror if I work on your film.’ Every day, more people dropped out.”
As well as production headaches, says Lapid, “it put us in a situation of paranoia. I was worried that not only would cast and crew members drop out of the shoot, but that they would denounce us to the minister of culture.” Casting was an equal challenge, with Lapid saying several famous Israeli actors went through the audition process and were cast, only to say a couple of weeks later they would not be in the movie. “The most important Israeli agent told actors it would be better for their careers not to join my film,” he says.
Despite all the challenges, Yes went into production on October 7, 2024, capturing footage of national commemorations to add verisimilitude to the project. “The film went into production even though no insurer would take on the risk of shooting during a war,” explains Alfandari. “Les Films du Bal and Chi-Fou-Mi greenlit a film made under rocket attacks — it was extremely courageous.”
During production in Israel, including near Gaza, missiles were often being fired overhead and the cast and crew had to take shelter during rocket alerts. “The endless smoke and the sound of bombs and missiles is all real,” says Lapid.
Lévy adds: “There were so many moments when we had to decide if we should halt the project, but as the risk — and the cost — rose, the film’s subject matter and artistic vision became more important than ever.”
One scene was shot just 500 metres from Gaza in a closed military zone. “We knew we would never get authorisation so we went with a limited crew of just five people,” says Lapid. “We were pressed for time and knew each take could be the last. Five minutes after we started shooting, the army began to circle around us and the commander ordered his team to send someone over to stop it. Luckily, the officer he sent was a cinephile and ended up saying ‘yes’ and disobeying his commander. He became our protector. It was strange to shoot such scenes about the Israeli army protected by the Israeli army.”
For now, Lapid is waiting to see how Cannes receives the film, which is still without an Israeli distributor. “It’s okay if people are furious or feel like they want to slap me at the end of the film,” he says. “But I hope they won’t.”
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