Ahed’s Knee

Attending a screening of his film in an Israeli desert town, director Y. meets an employee of the Ministry of Culture. She wants him to sign a list of government-approved subjects to discuss. Astonishing, uncompromising and urgent drama about artistic freedom in today’s Israel by Nadav Lapid.

Y. is a Israeli filmmaker in his mid-forties. He is preparing an experimental film about 16-year-old Palestine activist Ahed Tamimi, who went to jail for slapping an Israeli soldier. The project, called The Knee of Ahed Tamimi, is inspired by a comment of a Knesset member that he wanted a bullet in Tamimi’s kneecap.

Y. interrupts this project to visit a screening of one of his films in a small desert town. There he is welcomed by Yahalom. She works for the Ministry of Culture and is a big fan of Y. However, Yahalom wants Y. to fill in a list of topics he will talk about at the event – only state-sanctioned topics are allowed. While Y. thinks up a plan to sabotage this stifling of his artistic freedom, his mother is dying from cancer. It causes him to mourn his country and his mother at the same time.