‘Yes’ review: Nadav Lapid’s post-October 7 satire is loudly divisive

Dir: Nadav Lapid. France/Israel/Cyprus/Germany. 2025. 149mins

The October 7 assaults by Hamas, and Israel’s persevering with marketing campaign of retaliation in Gaza: most film-makers would contemplate these as subjects to be tackled with the utmost seriousness and delicacy. However Israeli director Nadav Lapid shouldn’t be one to deal in delicacy – though his method is very critical, in a bitterly comedian manner.

A full-on kamikaze method to up to date political satire

The director of 2021’s confrontational Ahed’s Knee (2021) and Berlin Golden Bear winner Synonyms (2019) returns with Sure, which takes a full-on kamikaze perspective to up to date political satire. The result’s certain to offend on a large scale, but additionally exhilarate with its sheer rage and ebullient aggression. Not for the faint-hearted, and definitely not for followers of Israel’s political established order, Sure guarantees to stir very heated debate.

The ‘Sure’ of the title is that of capitulation to a dominant order, as is the case with an Israeli couple named Yod, or ‘Y.’, (Ariel Bronz), a jazz musician and performer, and Yasmine (Efrat Dor), a dancer. Manifestly within the throes of an everlasting amour fou, and with a child son to boost, they earn a residing performing deranged cabaret routines at events for Israel’s rich, because the opening sequence establishes. Right here Y. – performed by Bronz as a charismatic however abject everlasting nebbish – is the hapless clown in an prolonged routine of self-abasement. Additionally they partake in intercourse work and are enlisted for a post-party threesome by a rich older lady (Idit Teperson), with absurdly amplified licking and slurping sound results.

Avinoam (Sharon Alexander), a smoothie PR whose head surreally pixelates to reconstitute itself as a video display, approaches Y. to compose the music for a nationwide music for post-October 7 Israel: “an anthem for a brand new era” commissioned by a billionaire (Alexei Serebryakov, from Leviathan and Anora). With the movie’s muted colors and temper now contrasting starkly with the strident hues of the opening chapter, Y. heads to the border with Gaza searching for inspiration.

There he meets up with Lea (Naama Preis), his ex, and climbs the area’s so-called ‘Hill of Love’ to look out on the black smoke rising from a Gaza beneath fixed bombardment. Right here the movie hits its most sobering observe as Lea delivers a clear-eyed litany of a few of the horrors perpetrated by Hamas – a bleakly arresting tour de power by Preis.

Maybe probably the most surprising ingredient of the movie is the kitsch video that ultimately accompanies Y’s anthem, with Israeli kids singing cold-bloodedly vengeful lyrics – in reality, a real video for an precise music, with the youngsters’s faces altered by AI.

A key to Lapid’s method is supplied by a glimpse of George Grosz’s portray ‘Pillars of Society’, giving a clue to the register of satiric amplification that defines this movie – one which regularly pushes the grotesque to extremes, (The opening part is entitled ‘The Good Life’, a nod to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita). Sure is liable to outrage individuals from many camps: amongst them supporters of Israel’s present actions; individuals who really feel that each October 7 and its aftermath make levity unthinkable; and those that imagine that, given the seriousness of the present state of affairs within the Center East, it is likely to be thought-about trivial to protest the situation of the Israeli artist.

Lapid is undoubtedly conscious of all these potential objections and, amongst different motivations, is definitely making the movie to have interaction with them. Together with his actors and inventive collaborators going full tilt – Shaï Goldman’s digicam at factors actually doing simply that, veering and swooping kinetically – Lapid has made a movie that’s unapologetically in your face. Sure shouldn’t be a straightforward movie to love – and it clearly wasn’t made to be favored – but it surely’s definitely inconceivable to disregard.