Somewhere in the middle of Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s new feature film, Yes, is a joke about a Jew talking to a travel agent about a suitable destination for his vacation. The Jew scours a globe given to him, but is still unable to point to a place. “Do you have another globe?” he finally asks. Yes, which had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight parallel programme at the 78th Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24), reflects the Paris-based Lapid’s determination to not seek a safe choice of filmmaking in a dangerous world.
Lapid, whose previous works that are often critical of the Israeli government include Ahed’s Knee, which won the Jury Prize in Cannes four years ago, questions the unrelenting bombing of Gaza and aberrant vengeance, in his movie shot in the middle of the war. The story of Y, a struggling jazz musician entrusted with the responsibility of setting a new national anthem of Israel to music, and his wife Jasmine, a dancer, the two-and-half-hour film ran into trouble even before it began the production when several Israeli actors and technicians refused to work on a project critical of the war on Gaza.
Lapid and his cast and crew went to within 500 metres of Israel’s border with Gaza, where, as the director says you hear “endless explosions” and see “smoke rising in the horizon”. The chairman of the competition jury at the International Film Festival of India, Goa in 2022, Lapid talks to The Hindustan Times about the making of the movie about a war that has killed more than 53,000 people in Gaza after the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7 killed 1,200 people and led to 250 people being taken hostage.
How did your new feature film project begin? Had you already finished writing the story of Yes when you were heading the competition jury at the International Film Festival of India, Goa in 2022?
When I was in Goa I think I was already working on the new film. It began as a kind of reflection about the place of artists, the weak place of artists, the defeated place of artists, the relationship between artists and the power, artists and the money, The modern artist is a clown and a prostitute, someone who is obliged to in a way and doesn’t really have the capacity of saying, No. In order to have a normal life, he is obliged to be submissive.
How did the project change after the October 7 attack by Hamas inside Israel?
I live in Paris. When I got to Israel a few days after October 7, I found myself, you know, inside of a kind of two opposite feelings. On the one end, I felt a tenderness and even compassion towards my motherland that I didn’t feel for so many years. You saw that the people were traumatised. They were in mourning. There was something heartbreaking in it at the same time. I understood again that this mourning, this silent shock, is going to bring about the worst results possible. And that this time, the vengeance would be biblical. For me it was clear they are going to create an image that will be stained in the collective memory for hundreds of years.
There is a strong feeling among people in today’s world about vengeance and a kind of involuntary celebration of violence against the enemy. Your comment.
There is a certain moment in life where normality is not an option anymore. There is not any more place for purity. There is no more place for normality. Israelis have had for years this fantasy about not having a Palestine anymore, getting rid of the Palestinians. This crazy, insane fantasy that one can dream, it suddenly became a concrete strategical programme. So, you know, I think the level of hatred is so huge, it is really a bitter, endless hatred.
There have been films on war, about war, but rarely do we see films made in the times of war. Is Yes a war film?
It’s a war film, it’s a love film, it’s a musical, it’s an almost fantasy film. I mean in a way the question in the film is, can something exist outside of the war? The film begins at a certain point and gets closer and closer to the world. It is a war film, but it wants to be a lot of other things, a little bit like its protagonists, a jazz musician and a dancer. They want to dance, they want to think, they want to love, they want to eat, they want to be normal parents. And at the end, you know, nothing will. I mean, the war will swallow them.
What was the journey for the production considering the film was dealing with a difficult subject?
The filmmaking was hard, but the daily news is worse. When you read the news about the war, it’s worse. There is a moment in the film when the lead character is telling his partner a joke. Do you have a different globe? Is this the globe in which we live? I truly don’t understand what other kinds of films we are supposed to do. I mean, I don’t understand what it means to make safe films in a dangerous world. But it’s almost a form of collation.
It is a feature film about a war, but you leave out the Israeli Prime Minister, who is a central character in the war. There is also no Donald Trump.
Trump is there a bit in the film. He looks a little bit like a young Trump, you know, very tanned and very blown. But I am not a politician. I always feel for me it’s kind of a mistake in attributing such things to political circumstances, in a way the elections. I think that there is a kind of sickness in the heart and soul of a society. Some societies get sick. It’s very, very complicated for them to cure themselves. And I think the Israeli society is deeply sick and it doesn’t help that all the people who call themselves Friends of Israel, they try to, I mean, they think that they help the society by preserving and legitimising its sickness instead of making it face the truth. I think this blighting, this blindness towards the other, this feeling of eternal victim, this is what creates (Benjamin) Netanyahu, the one who created or is creating this. I don’t care about Netanyahu. I care about the people, the people that I don’t know, and of course, the people I know. And they seem to be taken by the same blindness. It breaks my heart.
What is your view on differentiating antisemitism and opinion from the policies of the Israeli government?
Being an antisemitic is being an idiot. And being opposed to Israeli politics is the only normal thing that you can do at this moment. So I think if we can distinguish between normality and stupidity, we can distinguish between antisemitism and being human today. If you’re a human today, you cannot agree with this anti-humane politics.