In J. Hoberman’s estimation, Nadav Lapid (b. 1975) is “the most internationally acclaimed Israeli filmmaker in recent memory… and perhaps ever,” which is quite a distinction for a young director with only two feature films under his belt. Born and raised in Tel Aviv under the influence of film—his father a scriptwriter, his mother an editor—Lapid initially studied philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv and later attended the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem. He has had stints as a journalist, a television critic and a documentary cinematographer as well as a fiction writer; he published a collection of novellas in Israel and France.

Without traditional emotional and narrative guides, including background music, Lapid’s stories austerely, philosophically maneuver through lives fraught with disquieting, deep contradictions. Unpredictably discomforting and quietly humorous, the drama and suspense may not immediately register except for the emotionally electric buzz activating every scene. Often uncomfortably bound or cropped by the camera frame, his Israeli protagonists are trapped, in one way or another, between opposing realities.

Victims and perpetrators are not only indistinguishable but virtually beside the point in Lapid’s existential quandaries, which home in on an unspoken insularity and identity particular to Israel, with wider implications for all of civilization. With stories that are palpably shaped by, but barely mention, Palestine, Lapid’s cinema astutely lacerates the political negative space left in the wake of victim/hero duality. “The Palestinians at least know they are under occupation,” states a member of the ultra-left faction in Policeman. Lapid’s films present, with complicated lucidity, the internal conflicts both within the community and the individual soul that ongoing violence and wars externalize.

Much to the surprise of Lapid and others, moments before the release of Policeman—which depicts a group of Jewish anti-capitalist terrorists—unprecedented social justice protests broke out in Israel in 2011. Though nonviolent, the similarities to his film were eerie to a director who thought he was simply constructing a semi-realistic fantasy. "I felt as though people were taking the film out of my hands and screening it in real time.”

Perhaps Lapid’s phenomenal critical acclaim stems in part from this extrasensory sensitivity. The Harvard Film Archive is excited to welcome Nadav Lapid to discuss the reverberations of such incisive work. – Brittany Gravely