How an Israeli director's film about a Palestinian boy drew the government's ire

Shai Carmelli-Pollak's 'The Sea' won five trophies at Israel's Oscars but, the director tells Maira Butt, the country's artists are operating in an increasingly intolerable environment

- Maira Butt

Israeli film director Shai Carmeli-Pollak has a striking image pinned to the wall of his office in Kfar Sava. The picture, designed by his late friend and artist Dudu Geva, depicts a cartoon duck being pierced open with a knife.

“It is like what’s happening now. An apocalypse,” he tells The Independent. “He has many knives stuck in his body but is still optimistic. That’s how I feel.”

He has reason to feel both joy and fear. Last week, his film The Sea swept up five trophies at Israel’s national film awards, The Ophirs, including the top prize for Best Picture.

It follows the story of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy Khaled, played by Muhammad Gazawi, who dreams of seeing the Mediterranean for the first time in his life. However, he is turned away at a military checkpoint while on a school trip, due to what authorities say is an invalid permit.

The film places Palestinian lives at its core, which has caused anger in Israel. Within hours of the award being given out, Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar threatened to cut funding for the ceremony, blasting the win as a “slap in the face of Israeli citizens” and calling the event “embarrassing and detached”.

But Carmeli-Pollak says it is the “terrible reality of the government that this person belongs to, which is now creating a genocide, and we can’t deny it. We can’t blame films.” Last month, a UN report concluded that Israel is committing genocide. Israel says the charge is “false” and “distorted” but rights groups, including Amnesty International, have backed the claims.

The Sea is not the only recent film to critique Israel that has been met with backlash. Earlier this year, No Other Land, a story following Palestinian activist Basel Adra’s resistance to forced displacement from his home in Massafer Yatta, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film.