Nadav Lapid: Israel's 'philosophical' filmmaker who has stirred up a storm

Reacting to the backlash for his remarks about The Kashmir Files, Lapid says making bad films is not a crime, but the film is 'crude, manipulative and violent'

When I last saw Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, I was with a group of cinema students listening to his Q&A session at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Lapid was speaking about his film Synonyms (2011), an autobiographical movie about a young man who forsakes his Israeli identity for a French one. The film is one of Lapid’s most acclaimed works and presents a sometimes-humorous, sometimes-disturbing portrait of conflicted Jewish identities outside Israel.

I remember we were all feeling quite hungry and had left the session midway. We didn’t get a chance to meet him. We, however, managed to watch Synonyms as well as Lapid’s 2014 film, The Kindergarten Teacher.

Synonyms would later go on to win the Golden Bear award at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival in 2019, only the third of his major award wins. His debut feature film, Policeman, won the Locarno Festival Special Jury Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2011. Lapid is also the recipient of the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, an order of merit offered by the French government.

Not only this, the global acclaim of his films has secured him a seat on the jury panels at various international film festivals, including the International Critics’ Week jury at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

Most recently, Lapid was the jury chief at this year’s edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), where he triggered a row by saying he was “disturbed and shocked” to see The Kashmir Files (2022) being screened at the event. “It felt to us like a propaganda and vulgar movie that was inappropriate for an artistic and competitive section of such a prestigious film festival,” he remarked while presenting the jury report at the ceremony. 

His comments drew sharp reactions, including from Naor Gilon, the Israeli ambassador to India, who said Lapid had “abused in the worst way the Indian invitation to chair the panel of judges at @IFFIGoa as well as the trust, respect and warm hospitality they have bestowed on you”. Lapid, however, stood by his remarks, saying he “knows how to recognise propaganda disguised as a movie”. He said that making bad films was not a crime, but the Vivek Agnihotri directorial was “crude, manipulative and violent”.

The Kashmir Files was screened on November 22 as part of the Indian Panorama Section at the IFFI. The film depicts the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus following the killing of community members by Pakistan-backed terrorists. The film has generated much controversy in India but has also managed to touch a raw nerve for many of its viewers.

Was Lapid justified to call such a film “vulgar”? For those who have seen his films, or heard him speak, Lapid’s comments regarding the hotly debated Indian film would not have seemed untrue to his usual form, however.

Born in Tel Aviv, the 47-year old belongs to a family of filmmakers. His father, Haim, is a film writer and his late mother, Era, was a film editor. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and has studied philosophy at Tel Aviv University.

Lapid’s films carry the burden of his training in philosophy. Blending the personal with the political, his works reveal grimy details of conflicted Jewish identities in and outside Israel. Marked by choker close-ups, handheld camera shots, wonky camera angles, and unconventional framing, his films primarily play out their narratives through an outsider’s gaze. The narratives themselves are incisive and unapologetic, especially when it comes to shedding critical light on the functioning of the Israeli administration and military.

A prominent example is his most recent work, Ahed’s Knee (2021), which also won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year. The film trails a protagonist called Y, who is an Israeli film director caught between narrative freedom and accepting government financing for his film at the cost of his artistic liberty, being required to whitewash political and military realities.  

In all the 13 films he has directed, the Israeli auteur maintains a precarious balance of empathy and critique, a pride in Jewish heritage, and a criticism of Israel’s militarism.