Israel’s ‘Tell Me Everything’ Tops Ophir Awards, Becomes Country’s Oscar Submission

Moshe Rosenthal’s Tell Me Everything is Israel‘s official submission to the 2027 Oscar Best International Feature race by virtue of its winning the Best Picture prize Thursday’s at Israel’s Ophir Awards.

Tell Me Everything won a total of 10 Ophir trophies tonight, including Best Director and Best Screenplay for Rosenthal. It came into the night at Israel’s equivalent of the Academy Awards with a record 16 nominations.

In Israel, the Ophir Best Picture winner automatically qualifies to be the country’s submission to the Oscar category.

Rosenthal’s film (in Hebrew the title is Independence) is set in Israel in 1987, when 12-year-old Boaz (Yair Mazor) discovers that his father (Assi Cohen), whom he idolizes, is gay, shattering the family while the beginning of the AIDS pandemic looms as the backdrop. The two attempt to reconcile and heal a decade later. Ido Tako plays the older Boaz, and Keren Tzur, Neta Orbach and Mor Demari also star.

The pic had its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. It bowed in Israeli theaters on September 1.

This year’s 15-film Oscar shortlist in the international feature category will be revealed December 15, with Oscar nominations to be announced January 21, 2027.

Israel has been nominated 10 times in Oscar’s international category, most recently in 2011 for Joseph Cedar’s Footnote. Since then, it made the 15-film shortlist in 2015 with Foxtrot and submitted Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s The Sea last year. It has never won the Oscar.