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With ‘Let It Be Morning’ and ‘Cinema Sabaya,’ Israeli filmmakers are winning awards for portraying Palestinian stories
(JTA) — Years ago, the Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem took a class led by director Eran Kolirin, best known as the maker of “The Band’s Visit.” This month, movies by both filmmakers are getting theatrical rollouts in the United States.
On a recent Zoom call, Palestinian author Sayed Kashua joked: “Was that his class — how to use a Palestinian story?”
Kashua was smiling on Zoom as he said it — he is, after all, known for his often fatalistic sense of humor, particularly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the author had given his blessing for Kolirin to make an adaptation of his novel “Let It Be Morning,” and said he loved the final result.
But like most jokes, this one had a kernel of truth: Israel’s two most recent Oscar submissions, hitting New York’s Quad Cinema within a week of each other, both — to varying degrees — tell Palestinian stories.
“Let It Be Morning” is a dark comedy about an Arab Israeli village that has suddenly and with no explanation been cordoned off from the rest of the country by the Israeli military. This event forces its Palestinian residents, including a protagonist trying to return to his comfortable middle-class life in Jerusalem, to reckon with how their dignity as citizens has been denied to them by the mechanisms of the Israeli occupation. At the Quad, the film is accompanied by a retrospective of Kolirin’s work, including “The Band’s Visit,” the basis for the Tony Award-winning musical; the retrospective is sponsored by the Israeli consulate in New York.
The all-female cast of “Cinema Sabaya,” a mix of Jewish and Arab actresses, in a film directed by Orit Fouks Rotem. (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)
The following week will see the opening of Rotem’s film, “Cinema Sabaya.” It follows a group of eight women, some Jewish and some Arab and Palestinian, who bond with each other while taking a filmmaking class in a community center in the Israeli city of Hadera. Cast member Dana Ivgy, who plays the class’s instructor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the filming experience “felt like how living in Israel should feel,” adding, “We have more women in the film than in the Israeli government.”
Stylistically, the two films couldn’t be more different. “Let It Be Morning” is a tightly plotted narrative with boldly realized characters; almost all of its dialogue is in Arabic. “Cinema Sabaya” is a loose, heavily improvisational piece that is almost entirely set in one room, and is mostly in Hebrew (although in one tense early scene, the characters debate whether to conduct their class in Hebrew or Arabic). One is a dry, Kafkaesque satire; the other is an intimate, naturalistic drama.
But together, the films provide a snapshot of the delicate dance Israeli filmmakers must perform in the current climate. On the one hand, these art-house directors are being feted on the international stage for their empathetic storytelling that incorporates or even centers entirely on Palestinian characters. But on the other, they’re being attacked by government officials for their perceived insufficient loyalty — and their films’ very status as “Israeli” is being questioned, too, sometimes by their own cast and crew.
“Everyone can call it what they want,” Rotem said of her film. “I’m an Israeli and it’s in Israel, but I have partners who call themselves Palestinians, and some of them call themselves Arabs, and each one defined herself. I think it’s really how it should be.”
“A film does not have an identity,” Kolirin insisted in an interview with JTA. “It is a citizen of the screen.”
Eran Kolirin accepted the award for Best Director for “Let It Be Morning” at the 2021 Ophir Awards in Tel Aviv on October 5, 2021. (Tomer Neuberg/ Flash90)
Kolirin isn’t a fan of the label “Israeli film” in this case, even though that is how “Let It Be Morning” was categorized at its 2021 Cannes Film Festival premiere; its own press notes also list Israel as the “country of production.” That Cannes screening took place shortly after Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas that killed more than 250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and around a dozen Israelis. The events turned Cannes into a political firestorm when the film’s Palestinian cast refused to attend the premiere.
“We cannot ignore the contradiction of the film’s entry into Cannes under the label of an ‘Israeli film’ when Israel continues to carry its decades-long colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and apartheid against us — the Palestinian people,” the cast’s statement read in part.
“Each time the film industry assumes that we and our work fall under the ethno-national label of ‘Israeli,’ it further perpetuates an unacceptable reality that imposes on us, Palestinian artists with Israeli citizenship,” the statement continues, calling on “international artistic and cultural institutions” to “amplify the voices of Palestinian artists and creatives.”
Kolirin himself supported the cast’s action. He knew they were grieving over the outbreak of violence in Gaza and didn’t want to put themselves in a situation where “some politician is going to wave a flag over their head or whatever.”
What’s more, he said, the status of “Let It Be Morning” as an “Israeli” film, despite the fact that around half the crew was Palestinian, was not his decision: “The film was not submitted to Cannes as an Israeli film,” he said. “You know, you fill in the form: ‘Which were the countries that gave money?’” In this case, the answer was Israel and France.
Most of the cast later did not attend the Ophir Awards ceremony, Israel’s equivalent to the Oscars voted on by its filmmaking academy, where “Morning” won the top prize (which automatically made it Israel’s Oscar submission for that year). In solidarity at the awards, Kolirin read aloud a statement from his lead actress, Juna Suleiman, decrying Israel’s “active efforts to erase Palestinian identity” and what she called “ethnic cleansing.”
Orit Fouks Rotem (Courtesy of Kino Lorber)
“Cinema Sabaya” hasn’t played host to as much offscreen controversy, but its vision of Israeli multiculturalism is still inherently political. Rotem’s mother is a local government adviser on women’s issues in Hadera, and the film was inspired by her experience participating in a photography class designed to unite Jewish and Arab women. Rotem herself later led filmmaking classes in a similar vein as research for “Sabaya.”
In the film, Ivgy’s character, who is modeled on Rotem, instructs her class to film their home lives, while secretly hoping to make a movie from their efforts. When her desire to do so is revealed, the women in the class feel betrayed: They thought they were just making films for themselves, not for their stories to be told by someone else.
Similarly, Rotem said that working with Arab and Palestinian actresses made her “aware to the fact that I can’t really tell their story.” Her solution was to allow the performers — some of whom are well-known activists who had to think twice about appearing in an Israeli movie — to voice their own opinions, and to establish the necessary trust to allow them to be unscripted on camera.
She theorizes that “Cinema Sabaya” has been so well received in Israel because “it doesn’t say ‘occupation, occupation, occupation.’ It says ‘humanity,’ so people are less afraid.” (She also noted that, in real life, the women who attended her filmmaking classes bristled at her initial suggestion to make a documentary about them, telling her to fictionalize their stories instead — which she did.)
Lately the Israeli government has a tendency to view its filmmaking class as agitators unworthy of national support, particularly when they make films criticizing the occupation. Former Culture Minister Miri Regev often disparaged films she thought were bad for Israel, including celebrated international hits such as “Foxtrot” and “Synonyms.” Her current successor, Miki Zohar, has already threatened the makers of a new documentary about the West Bank city of Hebron, saying the movie smears the military and that the directors might have to return government funds.
In recent years, Israel’s culture ministry has pushed two new controversial proposals: a grant program earmarked for those who make films in settlements, which are considered illegal under international law; and a form pledging not to make films “offensive” to Israel or the military that filmmakers would be required to sign in order to apply for certain grants, which many directors have likened to a loyalty oath. For years, some of the country’s largest grantmakers have required applicants to sign a form promising to represent their projects as Israeli on the national stage.
There has also been an effort among some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government to end funding to public broadcaster Kan, which the country’s film industry views as another attack on its free expression.
“Kan has all this dialogue,” Ivgy said. “It has Jewish and religious and Arab and Palestinian, for kids and for grownups. And nothing is taboo there. I feel that it’s very dangerous to close that option down.”
Many Israeli filmmakers are fighting back. Hundreds, including Kolirin and Rotem, have refused to sign the ministry’s pledge, and many have also protested the settlement grant program. Nadav Lapid, one of the country’s most celebrated and outspoken directors, harshly critiqued government restrictions placed on his own work in the 2021 drama “Ahed’s Knee,” which went on to win a special prize at Cannes.
Kolirin said he had recently been on a call with several Israeli filmmakers looking to further organize against artistic restrictions, and that it had given him hope. “I had this feeling of some optimism, which I didn’t have for a long time,” he said. But he didn’t mince words when discussing Israel’s new governing coalition, which he likened to “a circus of mad dogs unleashed.”
Rotem said that the current government is “very, very bad and scary,” but that it has only strengthened her resolve to make political films.
“For me, it’s also political to show women in Israel in a deep way: I mean Arabs and Jews,” she said. “Because I don’t think there are enough films that are doing that.”
For Kashua, a veteran TV writer and opinion columnist, the question of identity in Israeli and Palestinian filmmaking is even more pronounced. After a long career of trying to write about the Palestinian experience in Hebrew as a way of reaching Israelis, he left Israel for the United States in 2014, becoming discouraged by an incident in which Jewish extremists burned a Palestinian teenager alive as revenge after Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Now based in St. Louis, he has worked as a writer and story editor on Israeli series that center on both Palestinian and Jewish stories — including the global hit “Shtisel,” which focuses on haredi Orthodox Jews, and its upcoming spinoff, along with “Madrasa,” a young-adult series about a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school.
Israeli filmmakers choosing to center Palestinian stories can be its own radical political act, Kashua believes. He noted that the dialogue in “Morning” is almost entirely in Arabic, a language that Israel demoted from national language status in 2018 — doubly ironic as he had deliberately chosen to write his original novel in Hebrew.
“The idea that this film is ‘Israeli’ — it really contradicts the idea of Israel being a purely Jewish state,” Kashua said. He added that, while he had initially hoped a Palestinian director might have adapted his novel, he was ultimately happy with Kolirin’s approach.
“I truly love the movie, and it’s barely Orientalist,” he joked, echoing Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said’s famous book about how a Western lens on Eastern cultures can be reductive and harmful. “Which is a big achievement for an Israeli filmmaker.”
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Milei praises ‘Judeo-Christian values’ at Chabad event as Argentina courts European Jews
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — Argentine President Javier Milei exalted “Judeo-Christian values” on Monday as he spoke to a crowd of 1,800 people celebrating the 32nd anniversary of the death of the last Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi.
Milei was the keynote speaker at the Hasidic Orthodox movement’s event marking the yahrzeit of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, becoming what appears to be the first sitting non-Jewish head of state to make an official tribute to the Lubavitcher Rebbe at a major Chabad event.
“The conclusion I have reached is simple in its formulation and profound in its consequences: When one embraces Judeo-Christian values, spiritual and material life become aligned and resonate on the same wavelength,” Milei said Monday night at the Palacio Libertad cultural center.
It was the latest in a long list of expressions of admiration for Judaism for Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who was elected in 2023 and since has made support for Israel a cornerstone of his agenda. He has previously visited Schneerson’s grave in New York City, made pilgrimages to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and presented a picture of Schneerson to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a gift. He was also honored at a Chabad synagogue in Miami in 2024, where he revealed that he believed he has Jewish heritage.
Milei has long studied Judaism and has said he wants to convert after leaving office but sees Jewish practice, including the observance of Shabbat, as incompatible with the presidency.
His 40-minute speech at the Chabad event focused almost entirely on Jewish religious texts and thought, quoting passages from the Torah as the basis of his economic view.
Milei also revealed that his address was drawn from the epilogue of his upcoming book, “Morality as State Policy,” in which he argues that capitalism is a system invented by “the Creator” — whom he also referred to as “the One” — to bring paradise to earth through work.
Jews in Argentina have a range of perspectives on Milei’s philosemitism.
“I appreciate that the president chose to attend and speak at the Tribute to the Rebbe,” Rabbi Tzvi Grunblatt, the head of Chabad in Argentina, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “He is doing so from a deeply personal place. I also think it is healthy for him to have this spiritual side.”
But Alicia Osipovich, a sign-language interpreter assisting a deaf attendee at the event, told JTA that Milei’s forceful support for Israel and Judaism made her uneasy, even as she personally appreciated it.
“I’m proud and deeply moved to have a president like him,” Osipovich said. “At the same time, I have some concerns. He speaks extensively about Israel, and you know how support for Israel is sometimes portrayed. He says he is a Zionist, but nowadays the word ‘Zionist’ is often used as a negative label. I have mixed emotions. As a Jew, I am proud, but I also feel some concern about the increased public exposure of Judaism these days.”
Under Milei’s leadership, Argentina has invited European Jews worried about rising antisemitism to consider the country as a destination. Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno recently emphasized Argentina’s attractiveness in a message aimed at Jews in Britain and other European countries who are grappling with surging incidents targeting Jewish communities.
“A country on the up with great opportunities. Sunny, with many natural attributes, and home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America. Strong stand against antisemitism. British and European Jews should seriously consider Argentina. You are welcome,” Quirno wrote on X in reply to author Saul Sadka, who had urged British Jews to consider leaving amid growing hostility.
Argentina’s leading Jewish organization, DAIA, has recorded more antisemitic incidents in recent years, mostly taking place online. But the rate of antisemitic incidents reported in the country last year was significantly lower than in many other countries with sizable Jewish populations, according to the 2025 worldwide antisemitism report published in April by Tel Aviv University.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s global director, praised Quirno’s invitation, saying it reflected a significant shift.
“Sign of the times? A country formerly ruled by a Nazi-supporting dictator has morphed over decades into a strong democracy whose president is a philo-Semite,” Cooper wrote in reply to Milei’s foreign minister. “Argentina currently serves as chair of IHRA [the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance]. Foreign minister now beckons embattled British Jews. Incredible.”
Israel’s ambassador to Argentina Eyal Sela told JTA at the Chabad event that he had no difficulty recognizing that Argentina is currently a very good place for Jewish life.
“Yes, I agree with the Argentine foreign minister,” Sela told JTA. “Of course, Israel will always be the best place for Jewish life. But today, Argentina is a much better place for Jews than Europe.”
Monday’s event opened with the testimony of Yosef Chaim Ohana, a survivor of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, who expressed deep gratitude for the support shown by Jews around the world, followed by remarks from his father, Avi Ohana. Milei hosted the Ohanas and Grunblatt on Tuesday morning at Argentina’s presidential palace, the Casa Rosada.
Dozens of Argentine nationals were murdered or taken hostage on Oct. 7. This week, an Israeli who had worked in Buenos Aires at the Israeli embassy in Argentina was killed in an attack on a moshav in central Israel.
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France bans Smotrich as 6 countries impose new sanctions over Israeli settler violence
(JTA) — Six countries have imposed coordinated sanctions against Israeli groups over settler violence in the West Bank, with France barring Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, from its borders.
France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway and Australia on Tuesday released sweeping sanctions on Israeli networks and leaders to “hold extremist settlers accountable for the horrific levels of settler violence against Palestinian civilians,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
The measures include a range of travel bans and asset freezes aimed at disrupting flows of finance to extremist settler groups as violence escalates in the West Bank. The United Nations reported over 1,800 settler attacks against Palestinians in 2025, the highest number since it began documenting incidents in 2006, and violence has remained intense this year. The Israeli military also recorded a sharp increase in nationalist and settler violence in 2025.
Israel said it rejected “the disgraceful measures adopted by foreign governments against Israeli citizens, entities, and a government minister,” accusing the other countries of imposing a political stance that was “camouflaged as measures against violence.”
“What these governments have in common is their resounding failure to combat the antisemitism that is rampant in their own countries,” said Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “Anti-Israeli policies of the kind adopted today only serve to fuel that antisemitism.”
New Zealand imposed travel bans last week on three Israelis: Itamar Yehuda Levi, Harel David Libi and Eliav Libi. Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the bans were not aimed at the Israeli government or people, but targeted “three individuals who have actively worked to expand illegal settlements in the West Bank, including through violence.” Levi and his construction company, Eyal Hari Yehuda, were also listed as targets of new sanctions from the United Kingdom. Levi, Harel David Libi and Eliav Libi could not be reached for comment.
France on Tuesday joined a growing list of countries to ban Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister who oversees demolition and construction in a portion of the West Bank. The ban comes days after Smotrich visited the United States to march in a pro-Israel parade in New York City, surprising many local Jewish leaders who said they do not support him.
Smotrich has already been barred from entering Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Slovenia. Smotrich did not respond to a request for comment.
Those countries have also previously banned Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister. France banned Ben-Gvir last month after he posted a video of himself taunting detained activists who attempted to carry aid to Gaza on a flotilla.
France added four leaders of settler organizations and 21 settlers accused of violence to its travel ban list on Tuesday, according to foreign affairs minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
The United Kingdom, for the first time, has explicitly advised businesses against economic and financial activity in the West Bank. The country released a list of seven sanctioned people and entities that financially support Israeli settler farms and outposts in the West Bank or are associated with physical attacks on Palestinians.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also announced at least £10 million for the Palestinian Authority, which runs Palestinian areas of the West Bank, and £1 million for humanitarian assistance with clearing mines in Gaza.
Canada announced that its measures on Tuesday brought the country to a total of 19 individuals and 12 entities sanctioned for “their role in extremist settler violence.”
The joint statement issued by five foreign ministers said that illegal settlements, which shrink the territory inhabited by Palestinians, undermine “viability of the State of Palestine and the prospects for peaceful coexistence.” Norway officially recognized a Palestinian state in May 2024, with France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia following suit in September 2025. New Zealand has not recognized a Palestinian state.
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’
(JTA) — Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, sparked fierce condemnation from Israeli and Latin American leaders after he tweeted the phrase “Heil Hitler” Sunday in response to an op-ed endorsing a candidate in the country’s upcoming presidential election.
Petro, a left-wing president in the final weeks of his term ahead of the country’s June 21 runoff election, posted the Nazi phrase in response to an op-ed supporting right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
Petro subsequently defended his use of the Nazi slogan, arguing that he was critiquing the language used by the op-ed’s author, which he said included “fascist phrases.”
His defense came after criticism from Israeli leaders and others who said the “Heil Hitler” comment was inappropriate.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called on the Colombian leader to “come to your senses and apologize” before Wednesday, when he is slated to preside over a debate at the United Nations Security Council.
“President of Colombia, @petrogustavo, whatever is going on in your personal life, there are lines that must never be crossed,” Danon wrote in a post on X. “Using Nazi slogans is a disgraceful low from which there is no coming back.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also decried the post, writing on X that it was a “total loss of moral compass and an indelible stain on Colombia’s legacy.”
The episode comes amid shifting norms about the use of Holocaust analogies and language in political discourse. After being considered out of bounds for a long time, people on both the right and the left have increasingly shed those norms amid growing political polarization and extremism around the world.
The “Heil Hitler” post was not the first time Petro has landed in hot water for invoking the Holocaust. In the wake of Oct. 7, Petro drew backlash from Jewish and Israeli leaders for likening the actions of Israel to Nazi Germany. On social media, he has repeatedly called political rivals Nazis, including last month when he wrote in a post on X that Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had behaved like a “true Nazi” after he posted videos taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
In 2024, Petro also severed diplomatic ties with Israel, accusing the country of commiting genocide in Gaza, an accusation Israel has denied. Espriella, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to renew diplomatic ties with Israel.
On Monday, 24 Latin American lawmakers signed onto a statement condemning Petro’s rhetoric, warning that his repeated use of references to Naziism risked distorting Holocaust memory.
“The use of references to Nazism must not become a rhetorical tool to discredit political or ideological positions. Democratic leaders have a responsibility to promote a respectful public debate that is conscious of the weight of words,” the statement read.
The statement was initiated by the Coalition of Latin American Legislators Against Antisemitism, which is led by the Combat Antisemitism Movement. The signatories included lawmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.
Shay Salamon, CAM’s executive director of Latin American affairs, said in a statement that Petro’s invocation of the phrase reflected a “troubling record of antisemitic expressions and conduct” by the Colombian leader.
“When a leader uses the authority of his office to stigmatize the Jewish people or trivialize their historic suffering, silence is no longer an option,” Salamon said.
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