When does music become noise? And can it be music from noise? It has not survived whether the Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid asked these questions when he has now fifth feature film “Yes“Developed. A film, the concept of which after the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent and continuing attacks by the Israeli army on Gaza was once again shaken through, as the director himself announced at the film festival in Cannes at the world premiere.
In any case, the focus is on a young musician (Ariel Bronz), which Lapid – as the protagonist of his predecessor “Aheds Knie” – simply calls Y. In contrast to the rebellious main character from “Aheds Knie”, the new Y has long been beyond good and evil and has been completely committed to obedience and pleasure. No matter what is required by him, his simple answer is always “yes”.
The Court Narrow of Tel Aviv
In a world, the sound of which is dominated by famines, bombs and cell phone messages over new death figures, the young Jingle composer Y tries to escape the violent noise of the present. For example, by turning up the music fully when new messages arrive. The opening scene in which the audience is thrown into the middle of an uninhibited party is directional for this scheme. There it gives the court joys for the rich and powerful Tel Avivs, which goes to the perfect self -disrepair.
On behalf of the entire film, the protagonist cries out the “La da Dee da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Da” from La Bouche's EURODANDANCE HIT “Be My Lover”-in the direction of a closed wall onto the top of the Israel. For their part, these roar towards him, in a version distorted to the unknown version, towards Elvis' “Love Me Tender”. In the same scene, we see, certainly not by chance, the Georg Grosz painting “Pillars of Society” from 1926-a caricatism manner about the elite of the Weimar period, which increasingly came together with fascism.
Y (Ariel Bronz) humiliates himself in every conceivable form in front of the rich and powerful Tel Avivs.
With the tenderness, that shows up early, it is not far in “Yes”. In one way or another, it may have been difficult to be Israeli since Israel's founding in 1948. But Lapid's obscene as well as devastating approach is impressive how much the already disturbed relationship with one's own state has complicated again. Divided into three sections, we first see Ys's life in the Israeli metropolis Tel Aviv.
On the side of his creative and romantic partner Yasmin (Efrat Dor), they fulfill the highest percent of Israeli society at uninhibited parties every wish. “The Good Life” is the name of this first part, and it takes less than five minutes until it becomes clear what perverted way this title is to be understood. A scene can be seen symbolically here in which Y and Yasmin satisfy a middle -aged dominatrix 'Ohral' – with her tongues in the ears of the woman – up to the climax.
The anarchy of pain
Apart from the Romanian director Radu Jude (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”), there is hardly any such anarchic filmmaker as Lapid these days. Although he hides his own pain less behind the obscenity than expresses it through it. So soon, Y will be hired by an oligarch to compose a new national anthem for Israel.
A hymn as it is prescribed by the new self -image of a winneration (and whose text is already prescribed). And yet the Israeli identity cannot be understood without the Palestinian. For y, at least this fact cannot be ignored, which is why he soon – in the second part – escapes: before the decade, before the work, before his fatherhood, before Tel Aviv.
Escape into the horror
In the second section, Y drives the car along the border with Gaza. He seems to want to make sure how real the horror there is – perhaps to be able to compose the hymn. On this trip, he is looking for the proximity to his ex-girlfriend Leah (Naama Prize), who now makes a translator for the Israeli defense forces IDF-the word propaganda also falls a few times in this context.
In one of the most intense scenes in the film, both sit next to each other in the car when Leah lists the Hamas Gräulats in a marker-shattering manner, which she had to translate after October 7-one by one. While the almost three -hour term leaves little doubt that Lapid is very critical of the current Israeli society, this scene adds a complexity to the film as painful and necessary.
Romantic bombing
But even this scene triggers follow -up questions when it comes to thinking: How is it that we have meticulously prepared biographies available through so many of the Israeli victims – their names, their age, their professions – while the killed Palestinians usually disappear to a bare? It is a question that is not quite answered. His perspective focuses so much on the evil on his own side that the Palestinian view-the word Palestine never falls-an abstract (sacrificial) collective remains.
The goal of her journey together is a hill that is called “Hill of Love” by the locals because you can see the Israeli bombing in Gaza particularly well from here. The dark clouds of smoke, which we see in the background of the scene on the tip of the hill, stir in actual military attacks that actually took place during the filming. In short: real life visibly penetrates into the fiction that is excessive into a glaring distort image.
Y and Yasmin (Efrat Dor) plunge upside down into the lying party madness …
An approach that increases in the last chapter when more and more real recordings mix into the fictionalized reality of history until both of them lash down to the utmost. For example, to be seen in the completed music video that the oligarchen Y presented towards the end-and that is based on the real video “Friendship Song 2023”, which was shared by the public law channel Kan.
This video shows a children's choir that sings that you will “destroy everyone” within a year, while we see military attacks on Gaza in overwhelmes. The only intervention that the 2019 Berlinale winner (for “Synonyms”) makes here on the video found are the angels in which he wraps the children using CGI and thus only adds a symbolic dimension to reality.
The present does not allow you to escape
Although Lapid succumbed to the force of his fabric here, his film, especially towards the end, loses his direction a little, but never his exuberant energy. Y and Yasmin do not want to stay in view of the never -ending retribution strokes. But wouldn't escape (for example to Europe) be an too convenient turning away from the evil that your own state commits? Maybe the real horror in “Yes” is that fiction is no longer able to be able to draw a picture of hope.
Similar to Ari Asters “Eddington”, which also celebrated in Cannes world premiere and deals with the internet catering culture during the COVID-19 period and its real effects, “yes” is above all a vision of the madness of our present. A vision that makes us particularly noticeable when we jump directly into the face from the supposedly fictional out of the supposedly fictional.
Conclusion: Despite its excess and occasional aimlessness, Nadav Lapid's “Yes” is an important time document over the moral tornness of Israeli society. With its anarchic mixing of fiction and reality, Lapid, despite some dead ends, occurs in previously uncomfortable territory and thus remains one of the most uncomfortable and thus the most necessary voices of the contemporary cinema.
We saw “Yes” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere in the “Directors' Fortnight” section.