Nadav Lapid

In an anxious and isolated world, paralyzed by the fear of the pandemic, one woman is determined to get a kiss — lips touching lips — from the Star of her dreams.Read More »

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid shows no signs of slowing down in this shattering follow-up to his bat-out-of-hell Synonyms. A film of radical style and splenetic anger, Ahed’s Knee accompanies a celebrated but increasingly dissociated director (Avshalom Pollak) to a small town in the desert region of Arava for a screening of his latest film. Already anguished by the news of his mother’s fatal illness (Lapid’s film was made soon after the death of his own mother, who had worked as his editor for many years), he grows frustrated with a speech-restricting form he is encouraged to sign by a local Ministry of Culture worker (Nur Fibak). The confrontation ultimately sends him into a spiral of rage aimed at what he perceives as the censorship, hypocrisy, and violence of the Israeli government. This boldly shot and conceived work, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels as though it has welled up from the depths of its maker’s soul.Read More »

In his first screen role, Tom Mercier plays Yoav, a disaffected young Israeli who flees Tel Aviv for Paris to start a new life. Desperate to erase his origins, Yoav sees becoming French as his only hope for salvation. He constantly consults his dictionary in an effort to stop speaking Hebrew, but finds working at the Israeli embassy is a distraction. Preparing for the French naturalisation test also has its pitfalls, while the young couple he befriends have some strange ideas about how to help him. Based on writer-director Nadav Lapid’s own experiences, Synonymes explores the challenges of putting down roots in a new place, as Yoav’s attempts to find himself awaken past demons and open up an existential abyss…Read More »

A boldly conceived and bracingly told political drama, Policeman (Hashoter) possesses a special contemporary pertinence in the wake of the recent massive protests relating to the vast class and economic disparities in Israel. This intensely physical first full-length feature from writer-director Nadav Lapid, whose 50-minute Emil’s Girlfriend showed at Cannes in 2006, divides its attention between an elite anti-terrorist police unit and a small cell of young upper-class revolutionaries whose slogans sound oh-so 1968. The winner of three awards (best first or second work, screenplay and cinematography) at the Jerusalem Film Festival and recipient of a special jury prize at Locarno, the highly charged film should travel far on the festival circuit and attract distributor interest in numerous Western territories.Read More »

Yoav, a young Israeli, turns up in Paris, hopeful that France and French will save him from the madness of his country.Read More »