At the Ophir Awards, Israel’s equivalent to the Hollywood Academy Awards that has been established since 1990, gave the award for Best Film to The Sea. Directed by Shai Carmeli-Pollak, The Sea details the narrative of a young Palestinian boy who after having his travel permit denied at an Israeli checkpoint, ventures on his own to the seaside. The boy’s father who works inside Israel as a paperless worker then searches for his son after he is missing, risking his job and his own life at the prospect of arrest. In addition to Best Film, The Sea won every other award it was nominated for, including Best Actor and Best Supporting actor for its lead child performance, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score. Upon the film’s success at the Ophirs, The Sea was selected by Israel to be its representative film for the Hollywood Academy Awards’s Best International Feature category.

However, despite its cultural success, The Sea has attracted controversy owing to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. At the ceremony, Baher Agbariya, the producer of The Sea, alongside other Israeli filmmakers, protested the violence in Gaza and lambasted the Israeli government’s role in continuing it. Following this, Israel’s Minister Of Culture, Miki Zohar, fired back, castigating the events at the awards show and announcing his aims to pullback financing for the Ophirs. At the same time, the Minister disparaged The Sea for its positive portrayal of Palestinians, including children, and criticized how the film negatively portrayed the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces. Later, Zohar revealed plans for a proposed Israeli State Oscar, a government backed awards body explicitly designed as a substitute for the Ophirs that would more readily “reflect the nation’s values and spirit,” presumably intended to avoid films that portray Palestinian life in the vein of The Sea.

Certain Israeli citizens have criticized Zohar’s actions, calling him out for “waving empty threats” and declaring that there is little legal basis for the actions taken against the Ophir’s fundings. The situation there is reminiscent of recent events in the American film industry, such as the canceling of Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel’s late night shows, following pushback from President Donald Trump onto the networks. Likewise, The Sea is far from the first time that Minister Zohar has drawn a conflict with the decisions of the Israeli filmmaking community, particularly on Palestine. With the Oscar winning documentary No Other Land, which detailed the Gaza crisis and the ordeal of the Palestinians, Zohar portrayed its impact with the Western world and Oscars as “a regrettable moment for the cinematic world,” and denounced the light in which it portrayed Israel.