Canadian Jewish filmmaker Daniel Roher, fresh off the success of his Oscar-winning 2023 documentary "Navalny," wanted to try his hand at a light, entertaining narrative film. That project became "The Amateur" ("HaMekhonen"), but the New York-set crime comedy unexpectedly sparked backlash in the United States because its villains are Israeli.
Roher said he was attacked by both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian audiences for making the bad guys Israelis. In the film, however, Israel is never mentioned, and most viewers do not recognize the characters as Israeli at all. The trio, played by Lior Raz, Gili Cohen and Nisan Skir, are security men and criminals who speak Hebrew and behave like rough, aggressive hustlers. Roher said the characters were originally conceived as Eastern Europeans, then as Bulgarians, but he changed them because that felt less truthful to him.
The director said he had mixed feelings after Hamas’s October 7 attack, admitting, "I thought, 'Oh shit, I'm going to have to change the characters. I can't make the Israelis the bad guys now.'" He added that Dustin Hoffman, who plays the Jewish mentor Harry Horowitz, warned him before filming that the casting could be read as a negative portrayal of Israelis. Roher insisted the characters were drawn from people he had actually met, including an Israeli locksmith he once hired after locking his keys in his car.
Roher also spoke about his long and complicated relationship with Israel. He recalled making a short documentary in Sderot in 2013, when he was 18 or 19, about children living under constant rocket fire. Seeing the same streets during the October 7 massacre was, he said, heartbreaking. He called Benjamin Netanyahu "one of the most corrupt leaders in the world," criticized the judicial overhaul attempt, said he supports a democratic Israel, and argued that artists and activists should not be boycotted. The film premiered last year at Telluride and later screened at Toronto, Sundance and London. Roher is now working on a new crime thriller, "Positano," with Matthew McConaughey and Zoe Saldaña.
