Yes. 2026. France/Israel/Cyprus/Germany. Written and directed by Nadav Lapid. With Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor, Naama Preis, Alexey Serebryakov. DCP courtesy Kino Lorber. In Hebrew, English, Russian; English subtitles. 150 min.
Kurt Vonnegut famously observed that “artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.” In life as in art, the Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid has become a singular embodiment of this idea, chronicling the uses and abuses of an artist in society in films like The Kindergarten Teacher, Synonyms, Ahed’s Knee, and now in Yes, even as he himself has become a target both of messianic nationalism in Israel and left-wing criticism at festivals abroad. Satirical and splenetic, Yes—the manic portrait of an Israeli jazz musician who sells his soul, bit by inexorable bit, when he’s commissioned to compose a rabidly jingoistic state anthem in the aftermath of the attacks on October 7—strikes at the core of Lapid’s anguished rage and impotence when the hate comes both from without and within.
Tickets are available to members at the Explore category and above beginning two weeks before each screening date. Additional tickets will be released to members and the general public one week before each screening date. Please note that space is extremely limited and tickets will be in high demand. Tickets can be reserved at moma.org/contenders beginning at 10:30 a.m. ET.
For the Contenders series, due to limited availability, members at the Explore category and above receive two free tickets per membership.
If a screening is sold out, a standby line will form one hour before the start time. If you are a ticket holder and arrive after the scheduled start time, we cannot guarantee entry.