Israeli director’s movie on Palestinian boy makes Oscar entry, but lands him in a sea of trouble

In the summer of 2023, Israeli director Shai Carmeli Pollak shot a film, The Sea, with a mix of Palestinian and Israeli actors about a boy from the West Bank who wishes to see the Mediterranean Sea. He had managed to find a producer from Palestine as well. The film was made before Hamas’s October attack and Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza.

The wistful tale of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy whipped up a scandal in Israel after it swept the Israeli national film awards, the Ophirs, in September 2025. Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, called the awards a disgrace and termed them a slap in the face of Israeli citizens. He threatened to cut funding for the awards, saying that Israeli citizens will not pay for a ceremony that spits in the faces of heroic soldiers.

At the 30th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in Thiruvananthapuram, where The Sea had three screenings, Pollak said his political awakening began more than two decades ago, when he first visited the West Bank. The Sea is Israel's entry to the Oscars in the international film category.

“I was really shocked by the gap between what I thought and what I was told to think, and the reality on the ground. That gap between the narrative I grew up with and what I saw with my own eyes completely changed my life. I began engaging in activism, travelling to different villages and standing alongside Palestinians in their struggle against occupation. I think it is because I witnessed what was happening first-hand, not through the media, that I felt compelled to act,” Pollak told Onmanorama.

He said it was not unusual to choose a film critical of the administration as the country's Oscar entry. Until recently, he explained, there was a clear separation between the Israeli government and film funding bodies. “The Sea was completed in 2023, before the conflict, and it was chosen through a democratic vote by members of the Israeli Film Academy. They watched all the films and voted based on cinematic merit,” he said.

Pollak said the minister's criticism helped clarify that he does not represent the Israeli government. “I would prefer to live in a place where the culture minister supports films even if they do not follow his own agenda. But we do not live under such a government. It is a very extreme government that does terrible things. In that sense, I am also a bit happy that he spoke against the movie, because he saved me a lot of work explaining to people outside Israel that I am not representing this government. He said it himself,” Pollak said.

The project received support from the Israel Film Fund, which Pollak said officially evaluates scripts based on artistic merit. While politics inevitably plays a role, he said, not all Israelis share the same political views, and there was still space for such stories to be told. Pollak said he feels more at risk as an activist than as a filmmaker. Standing alongside Palestinians, he said, can be dangerous, with threats from settlers, police and the army. While some filmmakers have faced attempts to block screenings, activism remains far more dangerous.

After the war began, distributors were initially hesitant to back the film because of its Israeli funding. However, audience response gradually returned, and festival invitations followed.

Pollak said films can open emotional channels that the news media often cannot. During screenings in Israel, he said, audiences were moved by the story of a Palestinian child, allowing them to see Palestinians as ordinary human beings rather than stereotypes.

But living in a conflict zone has taken its toll on him, he said. Years of violence and war have left him creatively shaken, Pollak said.

Speaking about his experience at IFFK, Pollak said he was moved by Kerala’s film culture and the audience’s openness. “Viewers here understood the nuances and did not judge the film or its maker based on identity alone,” he said.