For years, Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid has made movies that don’t so much argue as provoke—films that take the psychic cost of nationalism and belonging and grind it into something volatile. With “Synonyms” and “Ahed’s Knee” (and earlier work like “The Kindergarten Teacher”), his cinema has often felt like an internal revolt, a filmmaker interrogating the country that formed him with equal parts fury and disgust. “Yes” keeps that confrontation intact, but flips the method: instead of resistance, it follows what happens when people decide to comply—fully, publicly, and without blinking.
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Premiering in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, “Yes” unfolds in the days following October 7, centering on Y., a jazz musician, and his wife Yasmin, a dancer, as they make a pact to say “yes” to everything. It’s a vow that sounds absurd until the film shows how quickly it becomes a way of living. Y. and Yasmin begin offering up their time, their bodies, and their work to the highest bidder, turning themselves into entertainment for Israel’s social, political, and military elite. The more they agree, the more that agreement becomes its own performance—something demanded, rewarded, and eventually expected.
Then the film sharpens its premise into a single assignment with national stakes: Y. is tasked with composing the music for a new anthem, a triumphant piece meant to rally and harden. The commission forces the question out into the open—what does it mean to package obedience as art, to convert a moral surrender into something singable and celebratory? Lapid stages the spiral as a kind of relentless, lurid party, bouncing between satire and sincerity while never letting the characters (or the audience) pretend the bargain is harmless.
The result, by design, is not subtle. “Yes” plays like a righteous, comic scream of rage disguised as spectacle—an attempt to understand how “yes” becomes the default response to the unacceptable. It’s a visceral, blistering indictment of modern Israel, and positioned as an essential addition to post-October 7 cinema.
“Yes” stars Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor, Naama Preis, Aleksei Serebryakov, and Sharon Alexander. In theaters March 27. Watch the first trailer below.
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
