Just before the Jerusalem Film Festival opens on Thursday, and only a few months before the national elections, Culture and Sport Minister Miki Zohar has released a video on social media boasting about how the changes he initiated in the Cinema Law have stopped Israeli filmmakers from making movies that show Israel in a negative light.
In the video, a director and his assistant, clad in keffiyehs, are making a movie that consists of scenes of Israeli soldiers and West Bank settlers abusing a cute Palestinian child by popping his pink balloon and harming other Palestinian civilians. As they film each scene, they reach for an ATM that gives them piles of shekels.
Zohar appears, preventing the assistant from withdrawing more money from the ATM, and says, “Cut.” He goes on to say: “For years, the formula was simple. Defame Israel, and get a check from the government. No more. The cinema reforms that I initiated take our money away from movies that Israel haters love, [and give it] to movies that we, Israelis, love. The era of defaming IDF soldiers at the taxpayers’ expense has ended. Not on my watch!”
At the end, he stands in front of the slogan, “Right-wing action wins!”
The video comes just after a key member of the Likud party, MK Yuli Edelstein, announced he was leaving the party. Those remaining in the Likud, the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are jockeying for position, and this video can be seen as one way to win popular support.
The reforms Zohar is talking about represent a major change in the funding of Israeli films, because much of the funding for movie budgets in Israel comes from government-financed film funds. Early in 2025, he spearheaded a reform that prioritizes films with the potential for commercial success over more serious films and strengthens regional film funds at the expense of other funds.
These reforms revamp how the film funds allocate money by bringing government-appointed lectors into the process, whose mission is to prioritize crowd-pleasing comedies, such as the two Saving Shuli movies, which sold millions of tickets. In December, he announced the establishment of a professional committee to reexamine government budgeting for the cinema industry, which has led to a withdrawal of some film funding.
Zohar establishes new film awards
He also established new film awards, whose winners were determined by government-appointed judges, to rival the Ophir Awards, the Israeli Academy for Film and Television's awards. Some creators boycotted these new awards, while others participated.
Zohar made these reforms because of a perception that serious Israeli filmmakers tend to be overly critical of the government. He was especially incensed that the Ophir Awards gave the Best Picture prize in 2025 to The Sea, a drama by Shai Carmeli-Pollak about a Palestinian boy who goes to Tel Aviv to see the beach for the first time in his life.
Zohar denounced the Israeli Academy’s choice of The Sea in September as “absurd,” “anti-Israeli,” and a “slap in the face of Israeli citizens,” and said, “Under my watch, Israeli citizens will not pay from their pockets for a ceremony that spits in the faces of our heroic soldiers.”
Culture ministers in Israel have courted controversy in recent years by criticizing movies they feel are unpatriotic without seeing them, as former Culture Minister Miri Regev did with Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot in 2017. In The Sea, the boy and his father are eventually arrested, but most of the Israelis they meet go out of their way to be helpful. It was unclear whether Zohar had seen the movie.
Zohar also condemned Nadav Lapid’s movie, Yes, a blistering attack on Israeli attitudes and policies, which was recently released in the US.
Zohar and Regev’s attitude toward the film industry was a major policy reversal for a government that once treated filmmakers as its pride and joy, trumpeting achievements of Israeli films at festivals around the world on its official website. The Cinema Law, which increased funding to the film industry, which had been in the doldrums for decades, was passed by the Knesset with great fanfare and support from all major parties in 2001.
Said one veteran producer, who preferred not to be named, “It makes no sense for the government to give any money to hit movies like Saving Shuli. These movies are a commercial product that is very popular, and they make lots of money for the producers. The idea of the film funds is to support more serious filmmaking, and yes, these kinds of films often take a critical look at society. That’s not unique to Israel. It’s true of all serious movie making.”
A low for Israel's film industry
The Israeli film industry is at its lowest ebb in decades, perhaps ever, as more film festivals around the world openly or covertly boycott Israeli movies. Israeli filmmakers whose films were once widely shown around the world both in theaters and at festivals are now snubbed everywhere. Even Lapid, known for his criticism of Israel, inspired a boycott threat when he was invited recently to take part in a film festival in Marseille, and chose to withdraw.
Response to Zohar’s video was mixed. Some of those commenting on his various social media accounts were supportive, saying that it was about time for the government to cut funding to films critical of Israel. But many more excoriated Zohar and the Netanyahu government for trying to divert attention from more critical issues, such as the government’s refusal to appoint an official commission of inquiry into the handling of the October 7 massacre.
Guy, an X/Twitter user, spoke for many when he wrote, “Hey, it's funny that you're showing an IDF soldier struggling with a balloon. Because to remind you, in the year before 7/10, when explosive balloons and kites were flying around here, you stayed silent like a mute. A government of cowards.”