Natalie Portman, along with French filmmakers Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”) and Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”), have signed an open letter denouncing the cultural boycott of Israeli director Nadav Lapid.
Lapid was scheduled to sit on the jury of the Marseille International Film Festival this July but stepped down after facing opposition from pro-Palestinian filmmakers, some of whom threatened to withdraw their works from the festival if he participated. Lapid, who was born in Tel Aviv, is a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. He has lived in France since 2021.
His opposition to the current Israeli regime is noted in the open letter, which was published this week in the French newspaper Le Monde.
“That Israel’s greatest dissident artist [who] tirelessly denounces the fascist and colonialist tendencies of his government and its criminal moral failings in films that have won awards worldwide, should be forced to withdraw from a French festival should alarm us and mobilize us beyond this absurdity,” the letter reads. “It should alert us to the obvious truth: whatever crimes their state may commit, no one can be reduced to a passport.”
The open letter’s signatories have further decried the cultural boycott of Lapid as an “intellectual failure.” In addition to Portman, Audiard and Triet, the letter’s signatories include Mia Hansen-Løve (“Bergman Island”), Arthur Harari (“Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle”), Alice Diop (“Saint Omer”), Mati Diop (“Atlantics”), Radu Jude (“Dracula”), Louis Garrel (“The Innocent”) and others.
The letter insists no artist should be “threatened with erasure in order to atone for crimes committed by governments whose fiercest critics they are often among.”
“To those who believe that disinviting such artists places pressure on their governments, we respond that it is precisely by continuing to invite them that this means of protest remains effective,” the letter continues, concluding, “We stand with Nadav Lapid. Cultural boycott is an intellectual dead end that we must collectively find a way to move beyond.”
The Creative Community for Peace nonprofit upheld the open letter in a statement of its own later Tuesday, writing that it “stands with the French and international artists, filmmakers, and cultural leaders who have spoken out against the campaign targeting Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s participation in FID Marseille.”
“The BDS boycott campaign is nothing more than a discriminatory effort to exclude an artist because of his connection to Israel,” the organization founded to “galvanize support against the cultural boycott of Israel” said in its statement. “That should concern every artist, filmmaker, festival, and cultural institution.”
Lapid’s latest film, “Yes!,” premiered last year at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. A satire, the film takes a scathing look at the actions of both the Israeli government and Israeli artists in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks in 2023.
“It should also not be lost on anyone that Israeli public funds supported a film that sharply criticizes Israel — and that the same film was recognized within Israel’s most prestigious cinematic institutions,” the CCFP’s statement continued. “In closed societies, artists are punished for criticizing the state. In authoritarian regimes, state-funded works do not freely denounce the government … Israel, by contrast, funds, screens and honors films that challenge its leaders, criticize its society, and engage openly with its most difficult debates. Israel is a free and open society.”
“Yes!” received overwhelmingly positive reviews last year, but it was partly funded by the Israeli Film Fund. As a result, Lapid’s pro-Palestinian critics have accused him of complicity with the Israeli government, and it is one of the reasons a boycott has been called against him. He addressed his critics in a statement shared Monday with Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“I’d prefer to give these people some credit and not say this is antisemitism, but it’s definitely an insane, systematic fanaticism of a kind that’s often typical of groups like this, and it’s accompanied by violence and self-righteousness,” Lapid reportedly said. “It also makes no distinction between individuals. In its view, I’m guilty by virtue of my identity.”
“What’s even worse is the festival’s response. Because yes, these people exist, but there aren’t many of them,” Lapid continued. “Their power derives from the cowardice of institutions, which, at moments like this, prefer to make compromises, just as the festival in Marseille did.”
FIDMarseille defended its decision to invite Lapid to the festival’s 37th edition, arguing that a boycott campaign against his participation amounted to “an attack on our freedom to think and to programme.”
“We understand that the extreme violence of an Israeli policy laying waste to the Middle East gives rise, in turn, to forms of violence and intransigence,” FIDMarseille said in a statement to TheWrap. “Feelings are raw and nerves are frayed, and we share in that anger. Yet it does not justify this boycott campaign, which we experienced as an attack on our freedom to think and to programme. We did not seek to dissuade those filmmakers who wished to withdraw their films, nor did we renounce our invitation to Nadav Lapid. “
The statement continued: “It is, of course, entirely illegitimate to hold a filmmaker responsible or accountable for the racist, colonialist, and genocidal policies pursued by the government of his country. Singular voices that, like that of Nadav Lapid, endeavor to examine the violence inherent in the Israeli state and society must, on the contrary, be welcomed and heard, even if one subsequently wishes to challenge or deconstruct the narratives, forms, and positions they put forward.”
The statement emphasized that FIDMarseille “has always been a space open to the diversity and confrontation of ideas and perspectives, and to the free expression of dissent” and that the organization remains “steadfast in our commitment to defending that freedom.”
“We firmly oppose the logics of exclusion and pigeonholing that threaten the freedom and vitality of thought and creation,” the statement concluded. “We fully endorse the terms of the open letter ‘Cinema is not an embassy.’ We will not abandon the space for dialogue that we defend and hold dear.”
