Lawmakers mull doing away with ‘nuisance’ film fund rule

Culture Minister Miki Zohar says he wants to do away with a database established to ensure a diversity of voices would be involved with vetting film projects that seek financial support from state-backed film funds.

“The database caused harm,” Zohar says during a meeting of the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee. “The Israeli audience will decide who deserves funding.”

The comments come during a meeting to discuss an amendment to the Cinema Law that would abolish the database, before it goes to the Knesset for final passage.

The database, created through Amendment No. 5 to the Cinema Law by previous culture minister Miri Regev, requires the Film Council to operate a database of critics with an academic degree in theater, literature or communications, in order to ensure diverse representation of voices in Israeli society. The database currently includes 1,300 critics and evaluators, whose job is to examine and evaluate scripts submitted to government-supported film funds as part of financial aid applications from filmmakers.

According to data presented in the discussion, NIS 86.5 million was distributed through 11 film funds in 2024 for 328 Israeli films, including 37 full-length films.

The proposed bill seeks to abolish the database, allowing film funds that receive government support to hire or contract critics independently.

“The reform we made in the world of cinema brings about a situation where the Israeli audience will provide feedback to the film funds – the more Israeli audience views a film, the higher its rating from the fund, and as a result, the need for critics is gone,” says Zohar. “There is no longer a need to fear that the funds will be biased and fund scripts that promote only one agenda. If they fund a particular agenda that the audience doesn’t like, their budget will decrease or even disappear.”

A representative of the Israeli Film Council, Kifna Kifnis, expresses support for abolishing the critics database, as does Yoav Abramovich, CEO of the Ravinovitch Foundation for the Arts, one of the large film funds, who says that doing so will reduce the bureaucratic burden.

“Six years ago, when Miri Regev was culture minister, she changed the law and set up the critics database, and we were against it,” says Lior Tamam, CEO of the Screenwriters Guild. “But in reality, the database didn’t harm anyone and didn’t add anything, it just became a bureaucratic nuisance. We are pretty indifferent to leaving it because the market has already gotten used to it. The current amendment simply returns things to how they were before the Regev amendments.”