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A nonstop, orgiastic party that would make Pasolini or Bosch proud? Yes. A pop-colored blitz on the senses? Yes. An utterly necessary and devastating cry of the soul against nationalism? Yes.
Nadav Lapid’s “Yes,” which premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival out of competition, is all these things and more. It’s also been a controversy magnet since playing at the festival, as financiers and more did not want to go near the Israeli filmmaker’s fifth feature after “Policeman,” “The Kindergarten Teacher,” “Synonyms,” and “Ahed’s Knee.” From the trailer and the film’s plot — centered on two Tel Aviv artists tasked with writing a new anthem for Israel in the days after the October 7, 2023 attacks — you won’t be shocked as to why. But the film’s artistry — overflowing with excess and hedonism and an eye for commanding visuals — is impossible to dismiss.
In the days after October 7, Tel Aviv jazz musician Y (Ariel Bronz) and his dancer wife Yasmine (Efrat Dor) decide to say yes to everything — including a commission to write a rousing new national anthem. Along the way, they surrender their bodies and souls to Israel’s political and social elite. While “Yes” is a strident indictment of modern Israel — in which Lapid was ultimately able to shoot his film, even as the chances of him ever screening there have all but evaporated — it’s also a cinema of spectacle. Y and Yasmine writhe, contort, and undulate in all manner of orgy-tastic scenes that feel torn out of a movie musical.
“I truly don’t understand when the word ‘safe’ became positive in cinema and the word ‘dangerous’ became negative,” Lapid told IndieWire at Cannes last year once “Yes” proved to be the festival’s most volatile movie.
“I am saying what my press agent told me to say when I am asked why the film is not in the competition,” Lapid said a day before “Yes” premiered at the festival. “More or less, everyone asks this question. What she told me to say is, ‘Maybe it’s a question that should be addressed to the people who selected the film, and not to you.’”
Of the film’s unusual production, during which time many actors and crew dropped out over concerns with the material, he said, “We shot the film in an ambience of fear and paranoia because we were afraid to be denounced. We reduced [in terms of crew and cast] — there was only one monitor on set because we were afraid someone would do something he doesn’t like and would denounce us. ‘False script, fake synopsis.’ It was a little bit like shooting a film in the land of the country of the enemy.”
“Yes” arrives in select theaters on Friday, March 27 from Kino Lorber. Watch the trailer below.
English (US) ·