Natalie Portman, Justine Triet and Jacques Audiard Rally Behind Boycotted Israeli Director Nadav Lapid

Natalie Portman and French directors Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall) and Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez) have joined an open letter condemning the cultural boycott of Israeli director Nadav Lapid. Lapid, a trenchant critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government who has lived in self-imposed exile in France since 2021, had been set to serve on the jury of the FID Marseille international film festival, scheduled to run July 7–12. He pulled out following pressure from pro-Palestinian filmmakers, who threatened to withdraw their films from selection if Lapid took part. Those who objected to his participation pointed out that he accepted partial funding for his 2025 film Yes from the Israel Film Fund, which they view as an arm of the Israeli state. But the Fund has a long legacy of operating independently from the Israeli State, funding both Palestinian and Israeli films.

On Monday, more than 350 leading figures in the French film industry, including producers Saïd Ben Saïd (Elle) and Judith Lou Lévy (Dahomey), along with directors Stéphane Demoustier (The Great Arch) and Mati Diop (Atlantics, Dahomey), signed an open letter, published in French newspaper Le Monde calling the cultural boycott of Lapid “an intellectual failure.”

"In what way does the presence of a filmmaker on a jury or the screening of one of his films make him a representative of a state?” stated the letter. “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 said. “It should alert us to the obvious truth: whatever crimes their state may commit, no one can be reduced to a passport,” it added, saying citizens, especially artists, should never be held responsible for “crimes committed by governments they are often the most fervent critics of.”

“We stand with Nadav Lapid,” the letter concluded. “The cultural boycott is an intellectual dead end that we must collectively overcome.” Lapid defined the episode as a product of institutional cowardice rather than the activism itself.