The shock film of Cannes 2025 reveals its trailer trap
Director Nadav Lapid does it again with yes, a new burning denouncing Israeli politics.
Israeli filmmaker residing in Paris, Nadav Lapid has a complicated relationship with his native country. In Ahed’s kneehis previous award-winning feature film in Cannes in 2021 (and inspired by the true history of Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi), he was already criticizing the stifling of the discordant voices within the Hebrew State, through the figure of a director confronted with censorship while he comes to present a film in a small village.
With Yespresented last May at the Directors’ fortnight, Lapid pushes the cursor even further. His artistic double is still called Y., but this time he is a precarious jazz musician who tries, with his wife dancer, to console his country bruised by the terrorist attack on October 7. He is soon entrusted with the creation of a propaganda hymn to the glory of Tsahal…
The stormy projection of Yes had already marked the Croisette last May. Its release in the cinema, next September 17 in France, is also likely to make noise in view of the hot news in the Middle East. In December 2023, Nadav Lapid was one of the 50 filmmakers signatory to a forum in Release Asking for a cease-fire and the end of civilians of civilians as part of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2023.
