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.”
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.
The film 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.”
TheWrap has reached out to FIDMarseille for further comment.
