Jerusalem Film Festival, a Celebration of Discrimination: How Israel’s Film Industry Is Punishing Its Men

An update to this post – Oppressed Voices from Turkey, the US and Israel – is published here.

Earlier this month we published a detailed exposé on the gender imbalance and institutional corruption permeating Israel’s publicly funded cinema ecosystem. We showed how the Ophir Awards, the nation’s most prestigious film prize, had reached an extreme point of political manipulation – 11 women and just 1 man (not Jewish) nominated in writing and directing categories. It’s the kind of engineered imbalance that, if reversed, would provoke protests and formal inquiries. In Israel, it’s being marketed as progress. Israeli men, apparently, are good for one thing only – kill and be killed in wars.

Now, new information confirms that the discrimination is not an isolated incident – it has taken over Israel’s flagship festival, the 2025 Jerusalem Film Festival, currently taking place this week. The Israeli Narrative Feature Competition, long considered the highest national stage for fiction filmmaking, is now a tightly controlled showcase of identity politics, cronyism, and gatekeeping.

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

The 2025 Haggiag Award Competition features eight films, of which seven are directed or co-directed by women. Among the ten individual directors, only 1 is a male director, and 2 are co-directors with women. The screenwriting credits are skewed in the same way. Here is the breakdown:

Film (EN)	Director(s)	Dir. Gender	Writer(s)	Writer Gender	Minority Subject?	Minority Creator?
Oxygen	Netalie Braun	F	Netalie Braun	F	No	No
Foreign Language	Michal Brezis, Oded Binnun	F / M	Brezis (F), Binnun (M), Shoval (M), Stern (F)	F + M	No	No
The Sea	Shai Carmeli-Pollak	M	Shai Carmeli-Pollak	M	Yes – Palestinian boy	No
Mama	Or Sinai	F	Or Sinai	F	Yes – Polish migrant	No
Bella	Zohar Shahar, Jamal Khalaila	F / M	Shahar (F), Khalaila (M)	F + M	Yes – Palestinian	Yes – Khalaila (Arab-Israeli)
Nandauri	Eti Tsicko	F	Eti Tsicko	F	Yes – Georgian villagers	Yes – Tsicko (Georgian-Israeli)
Because You’re Ugly	Sharon Engelhart	F	Sharon Engelhart	F	No	No
Homes	Veronica N. Tetelbaum	F	Veronica N. Tetelbaum	F	Yes – non-binary immigrant	Yes – Tetelbaum (Ukrainian-Israeli, LGBT)

Source: Times of Israel, 13 July 2025 (Haggiag Competition announcement)

Israel’s Film Industry – Merit or Discrimination?

Thanks to deep ties in the Israeli film industry we’ve been able to write a number of articles about the local scene. One of these articles details how Katriel Schory, long-time legendry and first CEO of the Israeli Film Fund who had been running it from its inception for more than twenty years, allegedly approved a production grant of 1,000,000 NIS for The Last Cinema Show in Bucharest, a film connected to his wife Naomi Schory and her business partner Lodi Boken, just before the end of his tenure. We’ve published several articles about the Israeli film funds – The Rabinovich fund, Gesher, and the “Israeli film fund” , detailing a culture of revolving doors and alleged nepotism that stretch for decades.

After Katriel Schory was succeeded, first by Lisa Shiloach-Uzrad, then by Noa Regev (former head of the Jerusalem Film Festival), and Dana Blankstein Cohen was appointed as head of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School, all women, there was a sudden and significant rise in the number of female filmmakers being funded, selected, and awarded across the Israeli film ecosystem. Let’s take a closer look at part of an email we received regarding our article covering the 10th edition of the Jerusalem Film Lab, held in 2020, an event where statistical analysis revealed a 99.984% probability that gender-based bias influenced its proceedings, including the selection of the winning projects:

…. I’ve taken part of the lab in a certain capacity and can confirm that your facts are correct. There were 8 female participants and 4 male. There were indeed three “Masterclasses” (though really they were just 90 minute Zoom chats, this lab too place during covid) with established filmmakers and all three were women. There were seven jury members, six women and one man, who was the head (or artistic director?) of Tribeca, a festival known for being quite woke. All four awards went to projects led by women, and I can confirm your impression: it felt like the entire event was engineered in a way that didn’t give the men a fair chance. I say this for two reasons:

1. During the event, after one of the male participants finished his pitch, which was for a project that was backed by major international producers, the jury didn’t ask him the usual two questions like they did with all the female participants. Instead they asked just one question which was about the film’s title basically accusing him of making up a name (which wasn’t true). Later when the filmmaker spoke about the research he had done for the script the head of the jury cut him off and said, “we don’t have any proof of that” (the director doing research) which was both rude and very strange.

2. The lab was headed by a local producer who is known to be an activist. As an example for what I mean by that – during the George Floyd riots in the US this producer posted on Facebook something to the effect of “all women should unite and stand against male violence” implying something like that all men are violent or that only men are capable of violence, or something like that. I believe that after some backlash that post was deleted.

Israeli filmmakers are between a rock and a hard place. We want to support our female colleagues but what’s happening seems extreme. If they wanted to give all four awards to women they could have just announced it before or during the event and not let these poor guys prepare pitches, shoot scenes, and go through the motions. I’m pretty sure that the male filmmakers would have been fine with it. But why put up such a show? To humiliate?

This is not gender equality. It’s ideological overreach – an 87.5% female directorial slate following decades of male majority may sound like poetic justice to some, but to serious observers, it’s a sign that Israel has replaced corruption and some merit with corruption and gender metrics.

The Israeli Film Industry Is Not Just Biased – It’s Closed

This is not only about one festival lineup. This is about the system that produced it. The 2025 competition exposes the full extent of cronyism, insider domination, and ideological gatekeeping that now define the Israeli film scene.

Festival Gatekeepers Competing in Their Own Arena

Eti Tsicko, director of Nandauri, is listed as a member of the Jerusalem Film Festival’s International Programming Committee. In other words, she helped curate the very slate in which her film is now competing for Israel’s top prize. This kind of conflict of interest would be unthinkable in most democratic institutions, yet in Israel’s elite cultural circles, it goes unchecked and unchallenged. While Israel’s cultural elites – dominated by radical left-wing voices – are quick to denounce corruption in the right-wing government, they are themselves guilty of the very same abuses: cronyism, favoritism, and systemic discrimination.

Sam Spiegel: The Closed Loop

Five of the seven women directors are alumni of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film School or its International Film Lab:

• Michal Brezis
• Or Sinai
• Sharon Engelhart
• Veronica N. Tetelbaum
• Zohar Shahar (via Bezalel but linked to the Lab network)

The Sam Spiegel Lab holds its final project pitch session inside the Jerusalem Film Festival—just before the selection committees finalize the competition lineup. This gives its graduates insider visibility and privileged access that others simply cannot match.

What results is an echo chamber of mentors, funders, alumni and committee members rewarding each other in a tight, impenetrable loop—leaving little room for anyone outside the network, especially male newcomers.

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Netalie Braun: Power Beyond the Screen

Among the most prominent names this year is Netalie Braun, whose film Oxygen is in competition. Braun is no outsider—she is deeply embedded in the Israeli cultural elite:

• She has taught film at Tel Aviv University, one of the two dominant film schools in the country.
• She has served as a juror at multiple Israeli and international festivals over the past decade.
• She has received repeated funding from public institutions for prior documentary work.
• Her father, as she noted in an interview, was a recipient of Israel’s highest military honor, giving her significant cultural capital from the outset.

While none of this is inherently wrong, it paints a picture of an industry where gatekeepers are also competitors, and where established insiders – especially women – benefit from a system they now openly control and manipulate in their favour.

For Israel’s male filmmakers – especially emerging talents – the message is clear: you will not be judged by your work, but by who you are. If you are not a woman, preferably with a minority background or institutional connection, your odds of selection are slim. This is not speculation. It’s borne out in the data:

Metric	2000 & Earlier	2013–2018 Avg. (Adva Center)	2025 JFF / 2024 Ophir Awards
% of Israeli features directed by women	7%	21%	87.5%
Individual directing credits	–	–	7 of 10 female, 2 males are “co-directors”
Writers’ credits	–	–	8 of 12 female, 2 males are “co-directors”
Ophir Awards 2025 writing/directing noms	–	–	11 female / 1 male

Had these ratios been reversed, the outcry would be deafening.

A Hostile Environment for New Talent

Israel’s new generation of male filmmakers now faces a cultural landscape where:

• Selection committees are staffed by competitors,
• Film labs funnel their alumni directly into festivals,
• Funders favor identity politics over vision, and
• Criticism of this bias is labelled misogyny or bigotry.

This creates a climate of fear, resignation, and disengagement. Talented men are either discouraged from applying at all or feel forced to attach a female co-director simply to be considered. International festivals are increasingly seen as the only hope for fair assessment.

How can any healthy cultural ecosystem survive when half the population is told they’re unwelcome unless they play the identity game?

This Is Not Inclusion — It’s Discrimination & Corruption

Let’s be very clear: This is not about opposing female filmmakers. It’s about defending artistic freedom, transparency, and fairness.
Discrimination – whether against men or women – is wrong. And in Israel today, the institutional pendulum has swung so far left that it has abandoned the values it once claimed to fight for.

We urge Israeli cultural leaders, international partners, and the press to take a stand. Three immediate reforms should be implemented:

1. No festival selectors should be eligible for competition.
2. Blind first-round selection (no names, no gender) must become standard.
3. Gender caps should apply in both directions: no more than 60% of either sex.

Until then, the Jerusalem Film Festival, and the Israeli film industry as a whole, will remain not a celebration of cinema, but a case study in how identity politics, institutional cronyism, and unchecked favoritism can destroy the very meritocracy on which art depends.

Taken together, the features, shorts, and Ophir nominations form an undeniable through‑line: the Israeli film establishment has replaced open competition with an ideological quota system, reinforced by closed‑loop school networks and blatant conflicts of interest.

We thank the brave Israeli filmmakers who have spoken out and shared this crucial information. Israel is often said to “lead the world” – and sadly, it now leads in this disturbing new category: institutionalized discrimination against men. If you have additional information about Israel or similar trends in other countries, we encourage you to contact us.

A follow up article is published here:

Gender Discrimination – Oppressed Voices from Turkey, US & Israel

Related video – Attacking men for simply Existing