Four years after directing his vitriolic, self-reflexive film Ahed’s Knee, Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid turned to satire with Yes in 2025. The earlier film focused on Y, a controversial director (much like Lapid) invited to present one of his films in a small village in southern Israel. When confronted with a list of approved discussion topics which he is required to sign, he realizes that the national Ministry of Culture has begun a campaign to limit free expression. Censorship being anathema to any creative person, the director explodes:
“Suppose I want to discuss a nationalist, racist, sadistic, abject Jewish state, whose sole aim is to reduce the soul, particularly the Arab soul, to impotence and incompetence, so it collapses under the state’s oppression and will be completely at its mercy. A state that is a deadly, congenital or contagious disease for its citizens.”
His anger building, he continues: “What if the topic is Israelis, in their bestial ignorance, blind puppets, wretched creatures, who torment anybody different from them, and who are obsessed with their possessions. Any glimmer of light in them was extinguished by their schools, which commit crimes against their own students, which murder their spirit and exterminate their soul, which spew out impenetrable spite.”
Nearly collapsing from his exhausting diatribe, Y concludes: “The true nature of the country’s rulers is revealed, so cowardly, so vulgar, so grotesque. Their despicable laws prevent fresh air from penetrating people’s brains. Then those rulers, behind their nationalist exhortations, can easily tyrannize. They shut people’s eyes, so they forget there’s not one people, there are 1,000,000 people.”
With his newest film Yes, Lapid continues his increasingly darkening view of contemporary Israeli society through biting satire rather than unbridled fury.
The male protagonist of Yes is similarly named only Y. He was a concert pianist but is now mainly an entertainer along with his wife, Yasmin, who is a dancer. In the early part of the film, the couple live as if they were in a Broadway musical, exuberantly dancing in public and at home in their apartment.
But they are really prostitutes in several senses, seemingly willing to do anything to make money and secure powerful contacts. Y is far worse than Yasmin in this regard, however. So, it is no surprise when he eagerly accepts a commission to compose the music for a new national anthem for the “victory generation” featuring the theme “From Destruction to Redemption.” Y and Yasmin are living in the post-October 7th Israel seemingly intent on obliterating Gaza and overrunning the West Bank with unrestrained “settlers.”
Lapid chose to portray the upper echelon of Israeli society through parties in private mansions and on yachts. They drink, dance, and carouse despite the ongoing nearby war and the unimaginable suffering of millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Middle-aged or older military officers, government officials, industrialists, and wealthy businesspeople dance the night away in total oblivion.
In the opening party scene, set to the Eurodance rhythm of La Bouche’s “Be My Lover,” strobe lights flash while cinematographer Shai Goldman’s camera swirls dizzyingly, disorienting the senses and perhaps even one’s reasoning ability.
In the midst of all this mayhem-in-motion, the Chief of the General Staff (head of the Israeli Defense Force, the IDF) and several of his officers challenge Y to a song battle. While Y continues with “Be My Lover,” the Lt. General aggressively belts out the lyrics of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender,” turning a love song into a battle cry. We are suddenly confronted with a very nasty, belligerent military man hellbent on winning both a war and a song battle. Somehow, the director has turned La Dolce Vita into Patton. Yasmin wisely if reluctantly tells her husband, “Let him win.” This one chilling scene could be a metaphor for the past three years of Israeli history.
Emphasizing an artistic forerunner of this film, the song battle scene glides into a shot featuring in the foreground a book turned to the page showing German artist George Grosz’s 1926 painting, “The Pillars of Society.” Lapid’s satire of the power elite of Israel is not comical. It is as ugly, terrifying, and as prescient as the grotesque caricatures of the German elite painted by an artist who fled the Nazi rise to power in 1933.
Continuing in this vein Lapid treats us to various scenes of decadence and excess. An ultra-wealthy woman takes Y and Yasmin home to her mansion where she has the couple ravish her ears with their tongues until she collapses in orgasmic delight. Although we won’t yet hear the relentless explosions and rapid gunfire emanating from Gaza until later in the film, it could be construed that the woman’s ears prefer being used as sexual organs rather than hearing noises from the unfathomable genocide going on within a few miles of her home.
Surrealistically emphasizing the power of this strata of Israeli society, Lapid includes a scene in which a Russian-speaking tech/financial mogul exits a black helicopter, walks to a lectern, utters a few religious statements, and pushes a button which causes a skyscraper to rise from the ground instantly to the amazement and admiration of other “pillars of society.” Yasmin describes the billionaire to Y: “He created a startup to intercept drones. The war made him a star.” In the midst of this architectural/technological exhibition challenging Das Kapital, the Chief of the General Staff arrives, dancing, of course.
It is for these people and the rest of the Israeli people that Y must compose the music for the new national hymn celebrating a renewed Israel. The lyrics reveal a lethal, inhuman determination, hatred,and desire for revenge for the events of October 7, 2023. Included are such lines as:
Over the beach of Gaza falls the Autumn night.
Planes are bombing. Destroy, destroy!
Tsahal’s [IDF’s] brave soldiers cross the front line
To wipe out those bearers of swastikas.
In one year, there’ll be nothing living down there.
Exterminate. Love, love sanctified with blood.
And now all the words are exhausted.
All that’s left is our soul to shout out.
For our soul no longer only resonates.
Now we have a warrior soul,
The people of Israel,
The eternal, perpetual people
Without stenting we will protect our home
Without rest
We will show the world
How we exterminate our enemies
And we will remember forever
Our pure, beautiful compatriots
For a friendship like this
We’ll never let our hearts forget
Love sanctified with blood
Will always blossom among us
As chilling as the lyrics presented in the film is the fact that they are the actual lyrics of a song released by an Israeli organization called “The Civil Front” after the October 7th massacre.
It is no wonder that Lapid includes a scene in which Y uses the lyric sheet to stop the flow of blood from a cut on his leg. Since the film must occasionally adhere to elements of satire, the cut was caused by slipping on a banana peel. The shot of the blood-covered lyric sheet could have served as a poster for the film.
Although Y envisions making a ton of money if he successfully composes the music for the new anthem, there are times he is uncertain of the wisdom of having accepted the job. Even when he was first offered the commission, his response – “your wish is my command, Mephisto” – is revealing. Rather than thinking of the Marvel comic book villain, Y probably realizes that he is making a bargain similar to Faust’s when he sold his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for wealth and pleasure. The theme of artistic submission is thus embodied in Y and his acceptance of this Faustian bargain.
Even though Y initially chooses to believe statements made by the IDF spokesperson, he eventually satirizes the military while playing the piano and singing “For the Ninja soldiers. Ninja turtles. Our green, gun-toting heroes. They terrorize the bad guys, our ninja heroes all in green. The coolest turtles the world has ever seen.”
His growing uncertainty over the Faustian bargain he has made begins with Yasmin’s displeasure over the lyrics followed by disgust with Y. Complementing his wife’s negative attitudes is Y’s belief that after the October 7th massacre suffered by over 1200 Israelis, his dead mother has begun communicating with him, not verbally, but by powerful forces. In one of the party scenes, the yacht suddenly rocks violently from side to side, tossing people and their drinks all around one of the lavish rooms. In an even greater display of disgust with her son, Y is pelted by a relentless storm of rocks pouring down upon him.
Why would Y’s mother be so angry? When Y was faced with mandatory military service after graduating from high school, she told her musical son, “Go serve in the band, let the neighbors’ sons get killed.” And that is how he performed his IDF service.
Even though Y personally believes that the majority of the Israeli people were supporting the war effort primarily because they were “terrified, confused, and terrorized,” he is certain that his mother would not agree with the overwhelmingly belligerent response because “the occupiers’ tears disgusted [her].” His use of the word “occupiers” might signify her dislike of Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank or might even be extended to her disagreement with Zionism and the creation of the nation of Israel. Lapid has indicated in interviews that his own mother was not a Zionist.
As a sidenote, this use of the protagonists of Yes and Ahed’s Knee retaining contact with their deceased mothers was apparently a way for Nadav Lapid to continue honoring his own mother, Era Lapid, who had died in 2018. She had edited his early feature films, Policeman (2011) and The Kindergarten Teacher (2014), as well as beginning work on editing Synonyms (2019), a job finished by two other editors after Era Lapid’s death.
Perhaps out of guilt over his failure to continue a career as a concert pianist Y has not only prostituted himself, but he also acts like a buffoon. Early in the film he plunges his head into punch bowls and then falls into a swimming pool. While the elite partygoers simply stare at the rippling water, Y is saved by Yasmin, who has probably gone through other instances of his suicidal buffoonery.
Before his involvement in the ear-licking episode, Y had fallen out of the woman’s chauffeur-driven limo to crawl through dirt while vomiting. Somehow addicted to being on all fours, he crawls past the legs of other partygoers, stopping to snort coke off a man’s finger and allow a woman to make him “fellate” a slice of meat. Y is all too adept at debasing himself for decadent, powerful people. Yasmin is somehow “classier” and more in control when she snorts coke off the bare asses of a middle-aged couple.
Y’s final self-imposed debasement is almost impossible to watch. After successfully composing the music for the anthem and then playing the piano version to accompany a children’s choir and a propagandistic video of state-sponsored terror, Y goes to the dressing room of a nightclub where Avinoam, the Russian billionaire, and his assistant watch a young woman dancing and lip-synching to Margo Guryan’s “Hold Me Dancin’.” Y enters, looks around, kneels and begins licking the billionaire’s boot. Instead of kicking him away, the Russian gestures for his assistant, the woman, and Avinoam to follow suit, all licking various shoes. Y gets up and forcefully kisses the scowling mogul, who actually laughs before having Y thrown out of the room.
Interspersed throughout the film are reminders of what the elite apparently ignore or profit from – the war. While Y watches people exercising in a Tel Aviv park, he receives a text message on his phone: “Palestinian sources report 94 people died in this morning’s bombing of Gaza. A 5-story building has collapsed. Dozens of people are buried under the rubble. An army spokesperson said it is doing its best to reduce innocent civilian casualties.” As he reads, the soundtrack of the film includes gunfire, explosions, and anguished screaming.
Inexplicably the voice of an unknown, omniscient narrator appears about halfway through the film. As Y is driving east “on a road open to Israelis and forbidden to Palestinians” to go to a Dead Sea resort to work on the music, the narrator describes scenes outside the car windows: “To his left he saw Ofer prison. 1000 Palestinians detained without trial. Inmate 343 is in his cell. Motherfuckers, free inmate 343.” “To his right, a high wall and behind it, Palestine.” [Interesting to note that he says “Palestine,”, not “the occupied territories” or “the West Bank.”]
Representing the government’s official views of the war is Avinoam, who runs the military’s public relations department. With hair dyed blond and his face covered in orange “tanner,” he is Lapid’s transnational visual metaphor for … make a guess. Much like the orange-colored American’s use of the word “Communist,” Avinoam uses the word “antisemitic” to describe anyone who disagrees with the aims and actions of the military and Netanyahu’s government, especially any news reports which attempt to tell “unacceptable” truths. Thus, BBC, CNN, the New York Times, and somehow even the Pompidou Center in Paris are branded with that hitherto scathing word.
This is reminiscent of the phrase “anti-American” or “un-American” being used against people who protested the Vietnam War, supported civil rights, or promoted human rights for women and LGBTQ people. Just as being against President Nixon and supporters of the Vietnam War should not have been deemed anti-American, protesting against Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters of the war against Palestinians cannot rightly be deemed antisemitic. Reminding us of the immeasurable horror committed against Jews during World War II cannot be a shield, eternally allowing an Israeli rightwing government to commit its own horrors against another people. In support of this warning, the unknown narrator at some point says, “The Israelis, who grew up with the question, ‘How could people live normally while perpetrating horror?,’ have themselves become the answer.”
Avinoam seems proud of having access to atrocity videos “no one has yet seen.” For a sadist, atrocity images work as stimulating porn. He likewise relishes the fact that he was able to watch the bombing of Beirut from a yacht in the Mediterranean.
Even though Avinoam tells Y that “being an artist after 40 is repugnant,” he has no qualms about using him to secure a new national hymn. Supporting this endeavor is the mysterious Russian billionaire, who is benefitting from the war in Gaza (and probably in Ukraine, as well).
In the ancient amphitheater where the new hymn will debut the Russian practices a speech he will present with piano accompaniment by Y. His carefully selected words echo those of the official Israeli propaganda designed to support the atrocities raining down upon the people of Gaza and Lebanon.
He intones: “The enemies of humanity and the enemies of Israel are synonyms. A righteous man will use the cruelest, meanest, most despicable methods because only that can stop evil that thinks it’s good.” He doubtlessly refuses to recognize the irony of spewing statements that describe himself more than his enemy.
He continues, his face contorted in fury as he yells: “It’s the command of revenge! Wait for us, Gaza. Wait for us when evening falls. We will come. We will bring fire to your walls, Gaza, destroyers of humanity, sons of darkness and death. You have committed evil and you shall know great evil.”
We could just as easily be witnessing Vladimir Putin railing against Ukraine. That is perhaps one reason that Lapid made this character a Russian industrialist manufacturing anti-drone weaponry.
Certainly, Nadav Lapid is not insensitive toward the horrendous suffering imposed upon the Israeli people on October 7, 2023. In an interview with IndieWire, he explained: “I don’t reduce it to an anti-Israeli film. At the same time, it looks straight into the eyes of a place that experienced a terrible shock and reacted to it doing the worst possible.”
He already had an early version of a script for Yes, but by the time he arrived in Israel to direct the film, Hamas’s 10/7 terrorist attack had taken place, and Lapid rapidly revised his script. To represent the new situation, the character of Leah was introduced. She and Y grew up together, attending the same schools, and both learning to play the piano. When Y is suffering the uncertainty of his musical endeavor to compose a new nationalistic hymn, he evidently calls her from the resort on the Dead Sea. In the final, third portion of the film, titled “Night,” the two of them drive from the Dead Sea to the concrete barriers of Gaza, “from death to Hell.”
Besides discussing their youth and why they never really became a couple, Leah talks about October 7th – the rampant slaughter of men, women, and children. This grueling scene, as she pours out a litany of horrors she observed on TV, in later videos, and interviews, is delivered non-stop in a manner similar to the director’s list of his grievances against Israeli society in Ahed’s Knee. As she sinks into anger and frustration, she accuses Y of “feeling no sadness for our dead.” Her answer for critics and protestors is simply, “You don’t know how it is to live in Israel.” During her entire outpouring of grief and frustration, the camera is not calmly observing but is jerking about and casting us into chaos.
And where else could this torrent of horrible images emerge but on the border with Gaza, where even greater atrocities are being committed in revenge? Frustrated in their attempts to pass through IDF checkpoints, Leah and Y finally arrive at the cruelly named Hill of Love, an elevated area overlooking Gaza, where Israeli families have been coming to picnic and watch the war unfolding below.
Leaving Leah in the car, Y walks up the hill alone, reciting the catalog of horrors he has just heard. He looks out over a broad vista which includes explosions, rapid gunfire, smoke, and destroyed buildings. Too far away to see people, he begins screaming out some of the lyrics for the hymn: “In one year we’ll annihilate them all. Then we’ll come back to plow our fields. And we will return safely to our homes.” Of course, the “we” in these lyrics means Israelis.
Surely, he must also be wondering how Palestinians will “return safely to their homes” once, and if, the war ever ends as he surveys the desolate scene. As if to answer his own uncertainty about composing music for a new hymn for a nation committing such immeasurable atrocities, he says out loud, “I hope God doesn’t exist.”
Y’s uncertainty about the correctness of helping the present-day government in the only way he can – composing music – and his belief that he is being reprimanded and attacked by his angry dead mother in supernatural ways finally lead him to the only outcome that seems appropriate – suicide. Once drowning seems wrong after a final failure of will, he wanders out onto a highway and awaits an oncoming car to remove his moral pain. But, just in the nick of time, Yasmin pulls him to safety. Together they walk along the highway, and we might assume that they will continue as a couple, far away from Israel, perhaps in Europe where Yasmin had earlier fantasized raising their son Noah, who will neither “kill or be killed, where he will forget Israel, that he was born there, that the country exists.” This is reminiscent of the final scene in Ahed’s Knee, in which the film director looks out of the airplane window recording a video for his dead mother, whom he tells, “Farewell to Israel through the clouds.”
51-year-old Nadav Lapid bade his own farewell to Israel at some point by moving to Paris, where he had studied as a young man. However, the majority of scenes in nearly all his films have been shot in Israel. That may no longer be possible after making Yes, even though he is considered by many critics to be the most significant Israeli filmmaker.
Unsurprisingly Yes has not secured distribution in Israel and may never be shown there. Disappointingly, various groups boycotting all things Israeli have called for a boycott of Yes, even though the film is a powerful critique of Israeli society and policies. Such a blanket boycott makes absolutely no sense and has certainly been a blow to Lapid and his future endeavors. Far better that people at least see the film and make up their own minds. Fortunately, in the United States Yes is available to rent on Amazon Prime.
