Yes · reception & legacy

How Yes has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It premiered in Cannes 2025's Directors' Fortnight — a sidebar placement that raised eyebrows after Ahed's Knee had played main competition — to divided raves, and within a year had grown from 'divisive festival satire' into a full-blown international cause célèbre.

What's debated

The fight isn't over the filmmaking — it's that Yes gets attacked from both directions at once: denounced in Israel as a betrayal, then boycotted by pro-Palestinian filmmakers over its partial Israeli funding, leaving film fans arguing about whether any position on it is tenable.

Its footprint

The film became the flashpoint of a real-world boycott saga: after Lapid withdrew from the Marseille film festival under boycott pressure, over 350 French film industry figures — including Natalie Portman, Justine Triet and Jacques Audiard — signed an open letter defending him.

Where it stands

Too new to be canon, but it's already the 'you have to have an opinion on this' film for political-cinema devotees — the most argued-over entry in Lapid's already combative filmography.