‘Incitement’ Nabs Ophir Award For Best Picture, Becomes Israel’s Oscar Entry

The movie Incitement was the winner for Best Picture at Israel’s Ophir Awards on Sunday night, film and television magazine Variety reported this week.

The win automatically makes the film the country’s entry into the international film category at the upcoming 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020.

The Ophir Awards, also called the Israeli Oscars, are the awards for excellence given out to members of the film and television industry by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television. The award was named after actor Shaike Ophir and has been given out since 1990.

The winning film is a drama about the period of time leading up to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist in 1995. The movie, directed by Yaron Zilberman and co-written by Zilberman and Ron Leshem, creator of the original Israeli TV series Euphoria, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.

Other movies nominated for Best Picture include Tel Aviv on Fire, a movie about a Palestinian who works on a popular soap opera; The Unorthodox, a film about the founding of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party in the 1980s; Working Woman, a film about sexual harassment in the workplace; and Love Trilogy: Chained, a film about an abrasive police officer.

Tel Aviv on Fire premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival and earned its star Kais Nashif a Best Actor award. Love Trilogy: Chained premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Incitement also won an award for Best Casting at the ceremony.