Israel’s culture minister said he will work to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szur over their new documentary. I am.
Writing on the X website, Zohar described the film as “despicable,” saying it “constitutes treason.”
The documentary, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they claim Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. movie title, I amcomes from an acronym used by the Israeli military as shorthand for civilian casualties.
“This is exactly why I am leading important reform in cinema so that Israeli citizens will no longer have to pay out of their own pockets for damage done to IDF soldiers and the State of Israel,” Zohar wrote, referring to his recent reforms to government funding of the Israeli film industry.
I amLike a documentary No other land“The Film,” which Zohar and Ibrahim directed with Palestinian directors Basil Adra and Hamdan Bilal, did not receive any Israeli public funding. I am It was produced in part with the support of a British newspaper The Guardian.
In his acceptance speech in Venice, Abraham commented on “all the people – Israeli politicians and journalists back home – who are now attacking this film, denying it, without even seeing it,” adding that “the truth” of the killing of civilians in Gaza “has been documented and known since day one, thanks to Palestinian journalists, (and) more than 200 (journalists) have been killed in Gaza by the Israelis; their voices have been silenced and denied.”
talking to Hollywood Reporter“Ibrahim said I am It has not yet been distributed in Israel, but he said the filmmakers’ intention was to “disseminate it as widely as possible in Israel, the United States and Germany,” two countries that are major arms suppliers to Israel. Szur said the soldiers and officers in the documentary “spoke in Hebrew so that more Israelis would hear about (what they did in Gaza).”
This is not the first time the Israeli Culture Minister has targeted filmmakers. when No other land It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature last year, and Zohar described it as “a sad moment for the world of cinema.” No other land It was not released commercially in Israeli or Palestinian cinemas. The producers posted it for free online.
Earlier this year, the culture minister overhauled Israel’s film financing system, shifting public funds away from independent or artistic projects that address sensitive political issues toward films that have greater commercial potential at the box office. Zohar referred to the reforms as shifting “our money from the films that Israel haters love to the films that Israelis love,” saying they represent “the end of the era in which Israeli soldiers are blackened at the expense of Israeli citizens.”
Zohar intensified his reform plans after that the sea, A drama about a Palestinian boy, it won Best Picture at last year’s Ophir Awards, Israel’s highest film honor, and was submitted as Israel’s entry for the Academy Awards.
