Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Film About Yitzhak Rabin’s Assassin Takes Israel’s Top Prize

JTA — A film about the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as seen through the eyes of his murderer won Israel’s Ophir Award for Best Picture and will be the county’s nomination for an Oscar.

“Incitement” won Israel’s top prize on Sunday night at the Ophir Awards of the Israel Academy of Film and Television at the Cultural Center in Kfar Saba.

The Best Picture winner at the Ophirs becomes Israel’s submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language film, which has been renamed for 2020 to Best International Feature Film.

The film, directed by Yaron Zilberman, tells the story of Rabin’s assassination in 1995 through the eyes of his assassin, Yigal Amir.

Culture Minister Miri Regev slammed the award. “Yigal Amir is a murderer who shot a bullet into the heart of the nation and did the worst thing possible, kill a prime minister in a democracy,” Regev said in a statement. “There is no place for a film that tries to understand him or his motivations, or to hint or accuse others of being behind his heinous act.”

She also criticized the film for its portrayal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of the incitement campaign. Netanyahu, who was head of the opposition at the time of the murder, has been accused of using hateful rhetoric and preventing such rhetoric against Rabin in the run-up to the assassination.

The film was released in Israel on Thursday, though it was screened at recent international film festivals.

The shortlist for the Oscar will be released in December, with nominations announced on January 13.

The post Film about Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin takes Israel’s top prize appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.