Nadav Lapid at the Roma Cinema Fest 2025, evening 2 – Red carpet for the film “Ken.” Photo: D Avanzo/ProvvisionatoIPA/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), an organization comprised of pro-Israel members of the entertainment industry, released a statement on Wednesday in solidarity with the hundreds of industry members who condemned the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement for targeting award-winning Israeli director Nadav Lapid.

Lapid, who left Israel in 2021 and lives in France, has been publicly critical of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip during the country’s war with Hamas.

His 2025 movie “Yes,” a satire that is critical of the Israeli government, received partial funding from the Israel Film Fund. His film “Ahed’s Knee” won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021, and he also won the Golden Bear at the 2019 Berlinale for “Synonyms,” about a former IDF soldier trying to escape his past.

Lapid was scheduled to be a jury member at the FID Marseille international film festival taking place from July 7–12. Festival director Tsveta Dobreva told the French publication Le Monde that Lapid was initially invited “solely out of respect for his cinema,” but then she started receiving calls demanding he be disinvited.

In response to the pressure, festival organizers proposed that Lapid would only participate in a public screening of his 2011 debut feature “Policeman” and book signing. Several filmmakers who support the cultural boycott of Israel and were upset about his film “Yes” receiving Israeli public funding expressed dissatisfaction with the decision and withdrew their films from FID Marseille, in protest of Lapid’s participation. Lapid ultimately pulled out from the festival.

On Monday and Tuesday, Le Monde published two separate open letters – signed by more than 350 members of the film industry, including Lapid’s collaborators – condemning the cultural boycott campaign targeting the director’s participation in FID Marseille. Signatories included Natalie Portman, Justine Triet, Jacques Audiard, and producers of Lapid’s films “Yes” and “Synonyms.”

CCFP said in a statement that it stands in solidarity with those who have spoken out in support of the Israeli director and that boycott efforts against Lapid, who has always been openly critical of the Israeli government, “proves that the BDS boycott campaign is nothing more than a discriminatory effort to exclude an artist because of his connection to Israel.”

The pro-Israel organization said of the cultural boycott movement: “If its goal were peace, dialogue, coexistence, or meaningful criticism of Israeli policy, it would welcome Israeli films that challenge Israeli society. It would encourage their screening, debate. and circulation. It would recognize that artists who criticize their own governments are essential voices in any democratic culture. Instead, the boycott movement seeks to punish them.”

“It should also not be lost on anyone that Israeli public funds supported a film that sharply criticizes Israel – and that the same film was recognized within Israel’s most prestigious cinematic institutions,” added CCFP. “A film like this never would have been funded and lauded in the Arab world, Russia, China, or in many repressive countries that never face the endless onslaught of boycott campaigns or international criticism that Israel endures.”

“In closed societies, artists are punished for criticizing the state,” the group continued. “In authoritarian regimes, state-funded works do not freely denounce the government. Israel, by contrast, funds, screens, and honors films that challenge its leaders, criticize its society, and engage openly with its most difficult debates.”