23/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: Nadav Lapid valiantly attempts to take Israel’s temperature after 7 October but can only say so much from his soapbox

In Nadav Lapid’s new film, Yes, perhaps stifled by the horror they see around them, characters seem robbed of the capacity – or are just unwilling – to speak. They dance with an intimidating kind of aggression; emotions that are typically verbalised, like anger, passion or love, are sung or jolted onto a piano, Thelonious Monk-like. Then, in a more relatable move, the lead character headbutts commands into his iOS keyboard. With Israel racked with trauma on the inside after 7 October, and imposing it mercilessly on Gaza themselves, Lapid has likely captured what it’s like to be a comfortable civilian existing now in Tel Aviv, the country’s signature metropolitan area – a more valuable and insightful contribution than many would concede. Whilst a competition premiere would have increased the tension around this film, it’s easily one of the line-up’s best, and has premiered in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Whilst Ahed’s Knee [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nadav Lapid
film profile]’s lead character had the entire Negev in which to project his rancour, Yes’s protagonist – played by Ariel Bronz, and also named Yud, in transliterated Hebrew – operates in a more claustrophobic intellectual space, devoid of the hope, freedom and flexibility that Yud in Ahed’s Knee could already tell was on borrowed time. Being in the small demographic of Israelis not aggressively cheering on the war has voided Yud and his spouse, Jasmine (Efrat Dor), of their personhood and their souls; they rely upon the elite to live, whom they entertain with their art as experimental dancers, party “animators” and sometimes high-end escorts. Jean Eustache’s polyamory talk-fest La Maman et la Putain is an especial influence on Lapid, and with its 150-minute length in mind, Yes is his version of it, examining the dynamics of a modern couple struggling to hold on to their principles, cocooned in their modest flat as struggling new parents, although the streets and world beyond are even more triggering.

The film’s crux is Yud’s sense of submission – the ultimatum imposed upon him to say, “Yes”. Israel’s artistic population are deployed as arms of the country’s hasbara (propaganda) policy in times like this – although, of course, perpetual war is often the county’s reality. As he is also a talented composer, the task, if he wants to afford “squeezed” middle-class comfort and nappies for his son, is to set a disgusting, jingoistic poem calling for the annihilation of Gaza to rousing, but classily melodic, music.

In the movie’s main second portion, Yud takes a “method”-type approach to this job, crossing the Israeli-Palestinian landmass’s short diameter, from the West Bank separation wall over towards the closest point to Gaza he can reach. Perhaps he is trying to awaken the nationalism likely forced upon him in his youth and conscription (however mitigated by his late, adored mother’s moral conscience), and is attempting to interface with the median Israeli’s mindset. The project also sends his relationship’s security faltering, as he reconnects with his close ex Léa (Naama Preis) on the trip, with whom he shares more of an intellectual connection than his bodily and carnal one with Jasmine.

The different elements that Lapid tries to bring together don’t fall into place as seamlessly as in Ahed’s Knee; the camera gymnastics of the first part seem gaudily over-willing to impress you, even if they ultimately do, and the prior film had a vice-like focus and prescience that this uneasy present-tense summation can’t retain. Yet especially in countries like France, where he indeed lives permanently, Lapid’s movies are not just art, but platforms for real discourse. At a festival where many films have intriguingly resembled newspaper op-ed columns penned in the aftermath of crisis, Lapid’s is the most articulate, with future bylines from him guaranteed.

Yes is a co-production by France, Israel, Cyprus and Germany, staged by Les Films du Bal, Chi-Fou-Mi Productions, AMP Filmworks, Komplizen Film, ARTE France Cinéma and Bustan Films. Its international sales are handled by Les Films du Losange.