The nominations for the Ophir Awards, presented by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, were announced Sunday morning, prompting the perennial question: Has the academy finally chosen a movie that will earn an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature?
The winner of the Ophir Award for Best Feature Film will go on to become Israel’s official submission for consideration in the Best International Feature Academy Award category.
Israeli films have received 10 nominations in the category without ever winning, the record for the most nominations by a country without a victory, a fact that tends to be ignored by those who allege that Jews control Hollywood. No Israeli film has received a nomination since 2012, or made the Oscar shortlist since 2017.
The six nominees for Best Feature Film this year are Avi Nesher’s Our Loves, Shuli Rand and Gidi Dar’s The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), Reut Akkerman’s Home! Assaf Machnes’s Where To? Or Sinai’s Mama, and Moshe Rosenthal’s Tell Me Everything.
Tell Me Everything, which opened the Jerusalem Film Festival in July, leads the Ophir race with 16 nominations, the highest total received by any movie in the history of the awards. It tells the coming-of-age story of a boy who discovers his father is gay at the height of the AIDS epidemic and who reconnects with him later in life.
In addition to its Best Feature nomination, it received nominations for director and screenplay for Rosenthal, and acting awards for Assi Cohen, Keren Tzur, Yair Mazor, Mor Dimri, Neta Orbach, and Ido Tako. Tako is competing against himself in the supporting-actor category, where he is also nominated for Where To?
Close behind are Our Loves and The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), with 12 nominations each, while Where To? and Mama received 11 apiece.
'Our Loves' explores lives of Israelis on October 6, 2023
Nesher’s Our Loves is a movie about a diverse group of Israelis who think they are having the worst day of their lives on October 6, 2023, and follows them through the heroism and horror of the next day.
The movie was produced by SIPUR, an Israel-based, global film and television company, which brought international companies Fox Entertainment and Danny Cohen’s Access Entertainment on board, and executives from Fox and Access have said publicly they feel the movie could win the Oscar that has eluded Israel for decades.
Nesher is nominated for both directing and writing Our Loves. The film’s other nominees include newcomer Daniel Gimpel for supporting actress, Amit Yasur for cinematography, and Isaac Sehayek for editing.
However, the lack of acting nominees other than Gimpel surprised many, given that critics’ responses from preview screenings have praised the performances of many of the film’s stars, including Shalom Michaelshwilli, Lena Fraifeld, Magi Azarzar, Leib Levin, Hadas Yaron, and Noa Cohen.
The academy has a history of snubbing Nesher, although his films have been among the most critically praised and popular in Israel for nearly 50 years. He did not even receive a Best Director nomination until 2021. Twelve nominations for Our Loves obviously do not constitute a snub, but many actors in what critics consider weaker films received acting nominations, unlike most of the cast of Nesher’s film.
Rand, a veteran actor who became ultra-Orthodox years ago, received two nominations for The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan): for his screenplay and his performance in the title role alongside his wife, television personality Tzofit Grant.
He achieved the same double nomination for Ushpizin in 2004, when he won Best Actor but not the screenplay. The Wedding Entertainer is a crowd-pleasing film about a man struggling with alcoholism who tries to redeem himself.
Akkerman’s Home! tells the story of a woman who, following the death of her biological mother, clings to a family she has never known.
Machnes’s Where To? focuses on the bond that develops between a Palestinian cab driver and a young Israeli in Berlin, while Sinai’s Mama, which is currently in theaters, tells the story of a Polish foreign worker in Israel who finds that the family she left behind is falling apart when she returns for a visit.
The remaining Best Director nominees are Sinai for Mama, Machnes for Where To? Rosenthal for Tell Me Everything, and Akkerman for Home! Akkerman is also nominated for Best Actress for her lead performance in the film.
The best actor nominees are Avraham Shalom Levi for Farewell to Dough, Ehab Salami for Where To? Assi Cohen for Tell Me Everything, Ala Dakka for Many Waters, and Rand for The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan).
The Best Actress nominees are Evgenia Dodina for Mama, one of Israel’s greatest actresses who has not yet won an Ophir; Lihi Kornowski for Many Waters; Tzur for Tell Me Everything; Rebecca Esmeralda Telhami for Amal; and Akkerman for Home!
Along with Tako’s two performances, the nominees in the supporting-actor category are Tal Friedman for The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), Michael Moshonov for Thou Shalt Love, and Mazor for Tell Me Everything.
In addition to Gimpel for Our Loves, the supporting-actress nominees are Dimri and Orbach for Tell Me Everything, Goldman for The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), Rama Nasrallah for Where To?, and veteran actress Tiki Dayan for Farewell to Dough.
The screenplay category largely mirrors the Best Feature competition, with nominations for Nesher, Sinai, Machnes, Rosenthal, and Rand. Levi is also nominated for writing Farewell to Dough, giving him two nominations for the film.
The cinematography nominees are Giora Bejach for The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), Ziv Berkovich for Tell Me Everything, Maayan Buchnik for Where To? Matan Radin for Mama, and Yasur for Our Loves.
In the Best Documentary Feature category, the nominees are Esther, The Woman Who Did Not Know How to Love, Bay of the Sun, Flower, and Peace.
The nominees for Best Short Documentary are Ahmad the Movie Star, After the Votes Were Counted, Alon My Brother the Hero, I Am Esther, and Children No More: Were and Are Gone. The latter, directed by Hilla Medalia, focuses on civil protest during the Israel-Hamas War, and it previously competed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film.
The Best Live-Action Short nominees are The Other Body, The Sands Do Not Speak, Stars, Butcher’s Stain, Nechama, and Big Pappa. Butcher’s Stain, directed by Meir Levinson, previously won second prize at the Student Academy Awards and was nominated for an Oscar in the short-film category.
Late director Nitzan Gilady recognized in two categories
The late director Nitzan Gilady, who died recently, was recognized in two categories. His final film, Nechama, starring Reymonde Amsallem, is nominated for Best Short Film, while Moshonov received a supporting-actor nomination for Gilady’s Thou Shalt Love.
The animation nominees are Pigeon Blood, Everything Is Fine, Expectations, Casey, and Wider.
A total of 90 productions were submitted this year: 22 feature films, 33 feature-length documentaries, eight short documentaries, 17 live-action shorts, and 10 animated films.
The Ophir Awards ceremony will take place on September 9 at Cinema City Glilot, hosted by Shani Cohen and Adam Gabay, and will be broadcast live on Mako.