February 23, 1965
Sallah Shabati becomes Israel’s first Oscar-nominated film when it is named in the Best Foreign Language category for the 37th Academy Awards. The film, written and directed by Ephraim Kishon, stars Chaim Topol and highlights with humor the struggle encountered by Jews immigrating from Arab lands to Israel. At the Golden Globes, the film receives a special secondary prize as an outstanding foreign film, and Topol is recognized as a “star of tomorrow.”
The Oscar nomination is a significant moment for the young state and its nascent film industry. Sallah Shabati, a box office smash in Israel with over 1 million tickets sold, is released in the United States in March 1965. It continues to enjoy tremendous popularity.
It was part of an Israeli genre during the 1960s and 1970s called Bourekas films, named after a popular pastry from North Africa. Bourekas films are comedies and melodramas, usually with a Mizrahi protagonist, based on ethnic stereotypes. Bourekas films usually feature a conflict between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in Israel. Sallah highlights both this conflict and provides a critical look at the pioneering myth of the kibbutz and physical labor in building up the state.
Ten Israeli films have been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar (now the Best International Feature Film), but none has won. Three others have been nominated for Best Documentary Feature, including two in 2013: The Gatekeepers and Five Broken Cameras. Other Israeli works have received nominations in the shorts categories.
No Other Land, a collaboration of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, won the feature documentary Oscar in 2025, but it was officially a Palestinian-Norwegian co-production.
