Minister halts funding for Israeli Oscars over ‘pro-Palestinian’ winner

Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar said Wednesday the government was freezing funding of the Ophir awards, the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars, after it awarded its top prize to a film he dubbed “pro-Palestinian”.

The award for best film, as well as five other prizes, was given to “Hayam”, a film about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from the occupied West Bank who wants to travel to Tel Aviv to see the sea for the first time.

Winning best film means it will now automatically become Israel’s entry for the Academy Awards international film category next year.

“After the pro-Palestinian film ‘Hayam’, which discredits our heroic soldiers as they fight to protect us, won the Best Film award at the shameful Ophir 2025 ceremony, I decided to stop funding the ceremony with Israeli citizens’ money,” Zohar announced in a statement, saying the funds would be cut off from next year.

As well as best picture, the film directed by Shai Carmeli-Pollak also picked up the prize for best actor, awarded to Mohammad Ghazaoui, who plays the lead role, making him the youngest ever winner.

At the awards ceremony, several artists arrived dressed in black and called for an end to the war in Gaza.

“That this award-winning film portrays our heroic soldiers in a defamatory and false manner as they fight and risk their lives to protect us no longer surprises anyone,” said Zohar, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party.

The Israeli Academy of Film and Television, which organizes the Ophir awards, in response reaffirmed its “commitment to cinematic excellence, artistic freedom and freedom of expression”.

In March, the minister described the awarding of an Oscar to the Israeli-Palestinian documentary “No Other Land” as a “sad moment for the world of cinema.”

The documentary, co-directed by Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham, chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta, an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.