TEL AVIV (Reuters) -The director of Israel’s entry for the 2026 Oscars about a Palestinian boy’s quest to see the sea hopes it will help arouse compassion in his homeland during so much conflict.
Prospects for lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians have rarely looked so bleak after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, two years of war in Gaza and surging settler violence in the West Bank.
However, director and writer Shai Carmeli-Pollak has taken heart from the reception to his film “The Sea” which won Israel’s top film prize so was automatically submitted for the foreign-language Oscar prize to be decided in March.
“I met the audience that came to watch it and it was amazing that people could be emotional and sometimes shed a tear for this story while violence and atrocities happened not far from here,” Carmeli-Pollak said in an interview this week after a viewing.
“The Sea” tells the story of Khaled, a Palestinian boy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who fears growing up without seeing the sea and makes the perilous journey alone and without travel papers into Israel to try to reach the coast.
He had recently been turned away at a checkpoint on a school trip to the sea, and his sudden disappearance from home leads his father, an undocumented labourer in Israel, to risk arrest by setting out in search of him.
“The Sea” won Best Picture at September’s Ophir awards, the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars, prompting condemnation from Culture Minister Miki Zohar, who pulled funding from the ceremony over the movie’s portrayal of the Israeli military.
Israel’s government since 2022 has been among the most right-wing in its history, adamantly opposed to Palestinian statehood and committed to expanding settlement in the West Bank.
The 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people, has hardened many Israelis towards Palestinians and made criticism of the army more sensitive.
‘COMPASSION AND LOVE’
Carmeli-Pollak and the Israeli-Palestinian producer of “The Sea”, Baher Agbaria, said it was important to make films that helped people hear each other’s stories.
“I hope that the film will open other channels – channels of compassion and love – and give other ways that we can live together in this place,” Carmeli-Pollak told Reuters.
Agbaria said it felt surprising to bring a Palestinian story to mainstream cinemas in Israel against the backdrop of the war.
“Because (of) what is happening this is time also for this film, you know, for this kind of story, to listen to the others,” he said.
The film was released in cinemas in Israel in July and is still running.
At the 2025 Oscars, an Israeli-Palestinian film “No Other Land”, about the Israeli displacement of a Palestinian community in the West Bank, won the documentary feature film award, also angering Israel’s government.
Carmeli-Pollak, a longtime peace activist, said that even though the government did not want him to represent Israel, he was proud to be part of a community of filmmakers who chose to honour “The Sea”.
“I represent every people, like both Israelis and Palestinians, that aspire for peace and for equality and for living together in a different way than this government is working for.”
(Reporting by Miro Maman in Tel Aviv and Lianne Back in Jerusalem, writing by Angus McDowall, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
