27-06-2025
The film deemed ‘too Jewish' to be shown
If you had made a film that features Hollywood stars, won four top awards in its home country and was praised in its parliament, you might expect a clamour for it to be shown at galas around the world.
'No festival wanted it,' says Gidi Dar, the Israeli director of Legend of Destruction, which tells the story of the Roman levelling of Jerusalem and its Second Temple in 70AD. It does so in an innovative, beautiful way: in the film, the camera pans across 1,500 specially made still paintings as the characters are voiced by Oscar Isaac (Dune), Elliott Gould (M*A*S*H) and Evangeline Lilly (The Hobbit).
It's an unusual approach to a historic event – but, for Dar, its resonance is perhaps too timely, as Israel exchanges daily missile barrages with Iran and the war in Gaza continues. But Dar believes it is seen as 'too Jewish' – a category an Israeli movie can only escape if it condemns the Jewish state.
'I think that the festivals arena is very woke and there are hidden anti-Israeli elements in it,' says the 60-year-old on a video call from his home in the northern coastal town of Atlit. 'I can do a critical film about Israel, but what interests me very much is to touch our own culture.'
Dar is a secular Jew who has spent his career trying to bring life to ancient stories and traditions. He made his name with 2004'sUshpizin, a movie set in Jerusalem's strictly Orthodox community about a couple praying for a child while hosting two escaped convicts during the festival of Sukkot, a week-long commemoration of the exodus from Egypt.
But beyond a fortnight of upcoming screenings at London's JW3 Jewish cultural centre, he did not even attempt to secure a full UK release for his latest creation.
'I tried in America and people love it, but say, 'This is too risky for me, there's going to be demonstrations around it, people are going to be beaten up, they're going to destroy the theatre.' Forget about it. I don't need this.'
The shame is that Dar is sure his movie has a lot to say to people who are neither Israeli nor Jewish. It was inspired by the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. He documented how economic inequality, political disunity and what the Talmud calls 'sinat chinam' – or 'baseless hatred' – paved the way for rival factions of Jews slaughtering each other, just as forces closed in to brutally crush the Jewish revolt against the Roman leadership and to destroy ancient Judea.
The film draws inspiration from the past – but also the history of art. Dar's colleagues – David Polonsky and Michael Faust – spent seven years painting on Photoshop the 1,500 still images used in the 90-minute epic. The artists, who worked on the 2008 Oscar-nominated animated war documentary Waltz with Bashir, took inspiration from two millennia of culture, from first-century mummy paintings to Soviet silent cinema.
The idea of incorporating classic images from the history of art in their 'painted movie' came along 'when we saw a situation that reminded us of a Caravaggio,' says Polonksy. The duo turned Jesus's disciples in The Supper at Emmaus into students of the rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who is played by Elliott Gould. Of the Italian master, Faust says: 'They usually talk about him as the guy who brought dramatic lighting into painting. That works for us because we always want dramatic lighting.'
To design the film's characters, the duo's source material began with first century paintings that were used to cover the faces of bodies mummified for burial in the Egyptian city of Fayum. 'Because these are tomb paintings,' says Faust, 'they kept them very realistic, which was not necessarily the style of the time.'
But the face of Ben Batich – the leader of the Jewish Zealots voiced by Oscar Isaac – eluded them until a lightbulb moment, as an Iranian-Jewish mother and son cooked their lunch in a basement hummus bar in Tel Aviv. 'We ran back to the studio and did sketches. We knew that his mother was also going to be the right casting – but they still don't know about it.'
For the film's only joyous moment, a party held by Evangeline Lilly's Queen Berenice, Polonsky and Faust immediately turned to the 'kitschy' style of 19th century Dutch-born painter Alma-Tadema.
They directly borrowed a composition from Edvard Munch's 1896 painting By The Death Bed for the passing of ben Zakkai and gave a nod to Francis Bacon's smeared faces for 'a moment of grotesque violence', as the Romans begin to butcher the Jews in the city.
A scene in which the leader of a Judean rebel faction addresses a rapt audience is 'a direct homage' to their favourite silent expressionist film, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic Battleship Potemkin. They also mined Renaissance portraiture and 20th-century journalistic photography.
The movie premiered in Israel in 2021, screening against a backdrop of social unrest as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to push through judicial reform. Since then, it has inevitably been seen through the lens of October 7, the war in Gaza and now the battle with Iran, but, says its director, it speaks to the vulnerabilities of democratic states globally.
'It is a very dark war film, and super relevant,' says Dar. '[Jewish texts] said the polarity itself, the hate, was the reason Jerusalem was destroyed. It feels so familiar today. The divisions – enhanced by social media and maybe manoeuvred by other forces, whether it be Russia, China, Iran or Qatar – are big threats we all experience.'
He describes Legend of Destruction as 'like an arrow sent over 2,000 years to tell us, look what happened to us and beware because it might happen to you too'.
It might feel like a stretch to hope that a film can change Israel's politics, but Naftali Bennett, former prime minister, urged his fellow lawmakers in the Knesset to see the animated drama to understand that polarisation 'is not the way'. Screenings for politicians at both extremes of the spectrum resulted in them leaving the cinema hugging. 'The Left saw it in socio-economical terms and as a warning about the zealots. And the religious Right saw something about our tradition and a Torah lesson,' Dar reports.
Netanyahu's son 'saw it and tweeted about it', he says. Of the prime minister himself, he adds: 'I think that he sent some advisers, but he was worried that this film is in direct criticism of him because it speaks about corruption and civil war. It's not, it's about everybody who promotes division.'
Dar says he found himself in the editing suite trying to fashion a hopeful ending, 'but the film didn't let me. And then I understood, I don't need to sweeten the bitterness. I want to frighten you. It's a call for action'.
