Israel’s minister of culture announced plans to cancel the funding for the country’s top film award ceremony after a 90-minute drama about a Palestinian boy won best feature on Tuesday night.
Miki Zohar, Israel’s minister of culture and sports, writing in Hebrew on social media on Wednesday, said Israeli taxpayers would no longer pay for a “shameful ceremony that spits on heroic I.D.F. soldiers,” referring to Israel’s army. The ceremony, known as the Ophir Awards, is Israel’s version of the Oscars.
The winning film, “The Sea,” written and directed by Shai Carmeli-Pollak, tells the story of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in the West Bank who longs to visit the sea for the first time. After he sneaks into Israel and disappears, his father begins a desperate search for him. The film presents a harsh portrayal of Israeli soldiers.
“This great absurdity that the citizens of Israel are still paying out of their own pockets for the shameful ceremony of the Ophir Awards, which represents less than one percent of the Israeli people — is over,” Zohar said.
As the winner of the best feature award, “The Sea” automatically becomes Israel’s submission for the Oscar for best international feature. Nominations for that award will be announced in January.
Muhammad Gazawi, who won the best actor Ophir for his portrayal of the Palestinian boy, said in his acceptance speech that all children should be able to “live and dream without wars.”
Khalifa Natour, who plays his father, won best supporting actor but did not attend the ceremony.
“Following the army’s entry into Gaza and the genocide that frightens me greatly, I cannot find words to describe the magnitude of the horror, and everything else becomes secondary to me,” Natour said in a statement, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
According to Variety, the chairman of the Israeli Film and Television Academy, Assaf Amir, said in a statement that the film’s win was a “resounding and decisive answer” to the attacks by ministers in Israel’s government on Israeli cinema.
“I am proud that an Arabic-language film, born out of collaboration between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, has been chosen to represent Israel in the Oscar competition,” he said.
Representatives for Israel’s culture ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
The Ophir Awards were held hours after a United Nations commission said that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
It has been nearly two years since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people. More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza health officials, whose tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Frustrations among artists over Israel’s conduct in Gaza have steadily intensified. Last week, more than 4,000 actors and directors, including Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo and others joined a boycott of Israeli film institutions brought by Film Workers for Palestine, a group that campaigns for the end of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
In the days that followed, Paramount became the first major Hollywood studio to condemn the boycott, saying in a statement that “silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace.” (Film Workers for Palestine has argued that its boycott targets film institutions and companies, not individual artists.)
Several countries have also promised to boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel participates.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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