Ophir Award

The Ophir Awards recognize achievements across Israeli filmmaking, with categories encompassing films, direction, screenwriting, acting, and technical work.[2][3] They serve as Israel’s equivalent of the Academy Awards, while also determining the country’s submission for the international feature Oscar competition.[1][4]

Recognition extends beyond the best-film prize: the 2023 competition asked more than 1,000 academy members to choose winners in 18 categories, while the 2025 ceremony presented 19 categories, including a new award for short animated films.[5][6] The awards have also been examined academically in relation to gender, cinematic output, professional recognition, and publicity.[7]

The Israeli Academy for Film and Television was established in 1990 and began presenting awards that year.[1] Its membership initially numbered only a few dozen; by 2026, it had grown to 1,200 voting members, including people working in television and media as well as film professionals.[8]

In 2004, the award was renamed in memory of Shaike Ophir.[1] Born Yeshayahu Goldstein in Jerusalem, Ophir was an actor, comedian, and pantomimist who appeared in 28 films and received three Kinor David prizes.[4] He was also a singer and a Palmach veteran of the War of Independence.[9] His best-known film was The Policeman Azulai (1971), written and directed by Ephraim Kishon.[4]

Among early recipients, Ari Folman and Ori Sivan’s 1991 film Sha’anan Si won an Ophir Award.[10] Their Saint Clara (1996) received six: best film, best director, best actress, best supporting actor, best editing, and best music.[10] Folman’s Made in Israel (2001) subsequently received a best-director nomination.[10]

In 2008, Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bashir won best film, best director, and best screenplay.[10] It was selected to represent Israel in the American Academy Awards’ foreign-language film competition and subsequently received a nomination.[10][11]

At the 20th Ophir Awards in 2009, Ajami, co-directed by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Score, and Best Editing.[2] It was the first primarily Arabic-language film to receive the top prize.[2] That year, Lebanon won cinematography and art direction but not best film, despite having won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.[12] Ajami went on to become Israel’s nominee for best foreign-language film at the 2010 Oscars.[12]

The five Best Picture nominees in 2019 were Working Woman, The Unorthodox, Incitement, Love Trilogy: Chained, and Tel Aviv on Fire.[3] The ceremony was scheduled for September 22 in Kfar Saba, with a broadcast on Kan 11.[3]

In 2025, Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s The Sea won five prizes: best feature film, screenplay, lead actor for Muhammad Ghazawi, supporting actor for Khalifa Natour, and original music.[13] At 13, Ghazawi became the youngest actor to win an Ophir for a leading role.[13] At the September 9, 2026 ceremony, Moshe Rosenthal’s Independence won ten awards, including best film, best director, and best screenplay; its 16 nominations set an awards record.[14]

Academy members select the winning films and performances.[5] In 2023, more than 1,000 members were asked to vote across 18 categories, including Best Feature Film.[5] A report on the 2006 competition described 21 feature-film entries, of which 14 advanced to the final stage, and announced a lifetime-achievement award for filmmaker Nadav Levitan.[15]

The awards distinguish between different creative and technical contributions to a film.[2][3] Categories discussed in the 2019 competition included Best Picture, Best Director, screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress, while earlier winning films received separate recognition for editing, music, cinematography, and art direction.[3][12] By 2025, the ceremony included a new short-animation category, and that year’s winning short narrative film could also compete in the corresponding Oscar category.[6]

The Best Picture award has a separate international consequence: its recipient becomes Israel’s official selection for consideration in the Academy Awards’ International Feature Film process.[1] The selection practice dates to 1991.[16] Submission and nomination are distinct stages; an Ophir victory does not itself make a film an Oscar nominee.[1] In 2019, Israel had accumulated ten nominations in the foreign-language film category without a win.[3]

Seventeen of the 36 films that had won the best-film Ophir by the point of a 2026 analysis were first features.[8] Individual performers have also received repeated recognition: Shuli Rand won Best Actor for Life According to Agfa in 1992 and Ushpizin in 2004.[3]

Ophir results do not necessarily reproduce the judgments of international festivals.[3][12] In addition to Lebanon losing best film after its Venice Golden Lion victory, Kais Nashif was absent from the 2019 Ophir Best Actor nominees despite winning the Horizons acting award at Venice for Tel Aviv on Fire.[3][12]

Commentary has connected the awards with the range of communities and subjects represented in Israeli cinema.[17][18] A Mosaic essay uses the success of Rama Burshtein’s family drama Fill the Void (2012), which won seven Ophir prizes, to illustrate the emergence of films about Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities.[17]

In a 2023 Sapir conversation, philanthropist Mem Bernstein discusses Ophir-winning films supported by the foundations under discussion and says that many of those films also received Academy Award nominations.[18] The examples named include Footnote (2011), about a father and son who are both Talmud professors at Hebrew University, and Black Notebooks: Ronit (2021), an intimate portrayal of a Mizrahi family in Israel.[18]

The awards have also become a subject of scholarly investigation.[7] A gender-based study considers the Israeli Academy of Film and Television Awards alongside the Israeli Documentary Film Competition, examining their relationship to cinematic production, professional recognition, and publicity.[7]

The 2025 victory of The Sea, about a Palestinian boy attempting to reach the sea in Tel Aviv, prompted a public dispute over government funding and artistic freedom.[19] Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar announced that state funding for the ceremony would stop beginning with the 2026 budget, arguing that the film portrayed Israel and its soldiers negatively.[19] The announcement followed both the film’s win and speeches criticizing the government and the war in Gaza.[19]

Academy chairman Assaf Amir defended the selection, describing the film as empathetic toward its Palestinian protagonist and saying that seeing the “other” offered “small hope.”[19] The academy also defended its members’ authority to choose films and winners, emphasizing artistic excellence and freedom of expression.[19]

An earlier controversy surrounded the 2019 Best Picture nominee Incitement, which depicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination from the perspective of his murderer, Yigal Amir.[3] The film was already generating controversy before its release.[3]