Ken

A filmmaker committed to placing Israeli society under sharp critical scrutiny, Nadav Lapid pumps up the volume in KEN, directly drawing parallels between a decadent Israel today and Weimar Germany with a copy of George Grosz’s Pillars of Society seen at a boisterous pool party. And that’s just the prelude. Lapid’s protagonist Y, a musical comedian and sometimes sex worker (played by performance artist Ariel Bronz), is tasked with composing the score for a new fascistic national anthem post October 7. This hideous song, we will discover, is perhaps the least fictional part of the whole raucous provocation. To summarise this overstuffed self-annihilation would be futile, as KEN is a constantly inventive, abrasive tour de force that insists, in a polemic way, in unapologetically showing everything from Lapid’s own perspective. He has made a divisive political film eager to anger all sides, a no-win proposition slathered with an obscene messiness that aptly reflects the time in which we live, both inside Israel and out. Lapid asks essential questions: What does it mean to be an artist today who wants to avoid politics? What does it mean to be positive in a negative world? Is it possible today to only say “Yes!”? (Mark Peranson)

In the presence of Nadav Lapid.
 

Nadav Lapid: POLICEMAN (2011), THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (2014), SYNONYMS (2019), AHED’S KNEE (2021)