Yair Qedar

Yair Qedar is a documentary filmmaker, festival curator and LGBTQ activist . (; born June 13, 1969), In his project "the Hebrews", he chronicled the lives of Jewish and Israeli figures of the modern Hebrew literary canon. Qedar's 19 feature-length documentaries have all premiered at film festivals and have won the director over 40 prizes. Qedar is a leading LGBTQ activist. He created several queer films and the first Israeli LGBTQ newspaper. In 2026 he created and curated Aleph international festival for Hebrew language and culture .

Career Since the early nineties, Qedar has been involved in journalistic writing and editing. He has written for Schocken, Haaretz, and Davar, and served as editor and deputy editor of travel magazine Masa Acher.

After studying 20th century Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University, Qedar launched Ha'Ivrim (Hebrew: The Hebrews), a project in which Qedar makes one-hour biographical documentaries about writers and poets part of the Hebrew literary canon. The films are generally cinematic portraits, and are interspersed with archival footage, interviews, sound fragments and contemporary animation. The documentaries have all premiered in film festivals, aired on Israeli TV, and circulated far and wide in cinemas, cinematheques, community and cultural centers, in Israel and around the world (United States and Canada, Europe, Australia and Russia), earning multiple awards.

Qedar released his debut feature film Gay Days in 2009. The documentary documents the emergence of the LGBT community in Israel and is based on his own personal story along with the stories of other prominent gay men and women in Israel (Gal Uchovsky, Eytan Fox, Dana International, Offer Nissim, among others). It premiered in May 2009 in Tel Aviv at the Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival, and was also screened at the official opening of the Tel Aviv Gay Pride. The film was the official selection of the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival (TLVFest) and of the Panorama section at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

Qedar's The 5 Houses of Leah Goldberg (2011), chronicles the life of the poet Leah Goldberg. The documentary was the official selection of Docaviv Film Festival 2011 and Doc Aviv Galilee 2011. It won three prizes at the 2011 Israeli Documentary Film Competition: for editing (for Ayelet Ofarim), soundtrack design (for Aviv Aldama) and original music (for Eli Sorni and Carolina). The film was sponsored by the Israeli Film Service, The New Foundation for Cinema and TV and The Second Authority for Television and Radio. Competing at the Israeli Documentary Film Competition, it won Best Film of 2012 and Best Soundtrack of 2012. It was also screened at the Sha'ar International Poetry Festival in Haifa. The film was sponsored by the Israeli Film Service, Channel 8 and The Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts.

Bialik, King of the Jews, covering the life and art of poet Hayim Nahman Bialik, was an official selection at the Docaviv Film Festival and at the Miami Jewish Film Festival. It premiered in the spring of 2014 in cinematheques and on Israeli Channel 8. It was nominated as Best Documentary Film at the 2014 Israeli Documentary Competition.

In 2015, Qedar released The Awakener, the story of Yosef Haim Brenner, and Zelda - A Simple Woman, on the life and work of the poet Zelda Mishkovsky. The Awakener was an official selection at the 2015 Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival the Jewish International Film Festival, and the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival. It also won the Lia van Leer Award for Films about Jewish Heritage. The films were sponsored by the Israeli Film Service, The Avi Chai Foundation, Channel 1 and The Makor Foundation. From 2015 to 2017, Qedar collaborated with actor Ilan Peled, co-directing and producing the mockumentary mini-series Vanished, about the marginalization and discrimination of female artists in Israel. The series' first film, Lilian (about a fictional poet), was screened at the 2016 Haifa Film Festival, where it won the first prize in the documentary competition, the Rozalia Katz Award for Best Documentary Film. The move was criticized, and many called for the film's disqualification, claiming it did not meet the criteria of the genre. However, the festival management refused to do so. In 2017, it was nominated for an Ophir Award. The nomination was controversial, as the film deals with a fictional character. Gidi Orsher, a member of the board of the Film Academy, told Haaretz that in his eyes the film was not a documentary in any way, saying "If it misses like a duck and measures like a duck and it tastes like a duck - then it's probably a duck. For a movie to be documentary it has to be about real and uninvented characters. You can make a documentary about Superman but you can not determine that Superman is a real character."

In 2018, Qedar released Vogel Lost Vogel, a film documenting the life and work of David Fogel. It was screened at the Haifa Film Festival, where it received a special mention.

Following Israeli writer and social activist Amos Oz's death in 2018, Qedar directed and produced The Fourth Window, a documentary unveiling the life, work and tragedies of Amos Oz's life. Sponsored by Kan, Arte ZDF, and SVT, it was officially selected at the 2021 Thessaloniki Film Festival, the 2021 Docaviv Film Festival, the 2021 DocuText Film Festival, the 2021 Warsaw International Film Festival, and the 2021 Mumbai International Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary.

In 2021, Qedar released The Last Chapter of AB Yehoshua, a documentary about A. B. Yehoshua. It was an official selection at the 2021 Jerusalem Film Festival, where it competed in the Diamond Competition for Israeli Documentary Films. The film was sponsored by Kan and The Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts.

His new film about Sigmund Freud - Outsider. Freud (2025) is a film exploring the life of Sigmund Freud, written, directed, and produced by Qedar. Combining documentary storytelling with animation, the film delves into Freud’s legacy through themes of exile, identity, and resistance. It was produced with the support of Kan (Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation), ORF, ARTE-RBB, SVT, the New Fund for Cinema and Television, the Gesher–Rothschild Foundation initiative “Cinema Spirit,” the Sienna Fund, the Israeli Ministry of Culture, and CoPro. The film features animation by Tal Kantor and Moshe Zilbernagel, editing by Noit Geva and Tomi Shlez-Shafrir. The film won the Pitching Award at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, the Best Film Award at the Mannheim Film and Arts Festival in Germany, and the Best Documentary/Animation Film prizes at both the Jaipur International Film Festival and the New Delhi Film Festival in 2025. It was also part of the official selection at the Haifa International Film Festival. Winning the 2025 Gradiva award, the major award in the field of Psychoanalysis. The film was shown over 300 times in the more than 20 countries.

The film has been screened in collaboration with psychoanalytic societies and institutions in New York, Chicago, San Diego, Prague, Belgrade, Calcutta, Paris, the Freud Museums in Vienna and London, the Library of Congress in Washington, and leading universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, Cornell, and Stanford.

In 2026, Qedar founded the ALEPH Festival, an international cultural initiative dedicated to the Hebrew language and culture. Moving beyond its liturgical and ancient roots, the festival spotlights Hebrew as a living, evolving tongue through a contemporary lens. The festival is notable for its global reach, holding synchronized events in major cultural hubs including Berlin, London, Stockholm, New York, Boston, and Hollywood, Florida. Under Qedar's artistic direction, the program bridges the gap between historical linguistics and modern creative expression, featuring a mix of cinema, literature, and performative arts that celebrate the language's ongoing vitality .

Qedar has taught film at the Sam Spiegel School in Jerusalem, and at various academic institutions, including the Shenkar School, Beit Berl College and Emek Yizrael College.

Activism In addition to his work as a documentary maker, Qedar is a prominent member of the Israeli LGBT community. He founded the country's first LGBT newspaper HaZman HaVarod (Pink Times), where he served as editor. He also served as the editor-in-chief of Another Journey magazine. writes in various publications, such as Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth, Masa Acher, and is recipient of various journalistic prizes, including winner of the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism in 2003, and Euromed Heritage Journalistic Award in 2005 and 2006.

In 2003, Qedar edited the first gay theatre show in Israel in 1994, as well as Beyond Sexuality, an anthology of gay and lesbian studies. In 2010, alongside Yossi Berg, he co-founded Rainbow Families Organization, aimed at promoting the rights, understanding and position of LGBT families in Israel.

His debut documentary Gay Days'' depicts Israel's so-called "pink revolution".

In 2021, he and his partners launched the Proud Community Heritage Project.

Filmography Assi Azar 2011 5 Houses of Leah Goldberg Leah Goldberg 2012 The Seven Tapes Yona Wallach 2014 Bialik, King of the Jews Hayim Nahman Bialik

The Awakener Yosef Haim Brenner Zelda, A Simple Woman Miss Bluwstein|Rachel The Raven|Ze'ev Jabotinski as producer Vanished (Lilyan, Yona, Bebe)| Fictional poet, fictional dancer, fictional actress miniseries, as codirector

Yeshurun in 6 Chapters Avoth Yeshurun as producer, film directed by Amichai Chasson Black Honey Abraham Sutzkever Alone|Miriam Yalan-Shteklis as producer MORI Shalom Shabazi Vogel Lost Vogel David Vogel 2019 Levantine|Jacqueline Kahanoff as producer

The Last Chapter of A.B. Yehoshua Abraham Yehoshua The Fourth Window Amos Oz director-producer 2023 Spinoza: 6 Reasons for the Excommunication of the Philosopher Baruch Spinoza as producer 2023 The Activist. Karl Marx Karl Marx as producer 2025 Outsider. Freud''Sigmund Freudas director-producer

Personal life Kedar was born and raised in Afula. He attended Tel Aviv University in the 1990s, graduating with a bachelor's and master's degree in Hebrew literature.

In 2003, his son Michael Ron Qedar was born, in joint parenting with journalist Zahara Ron. In 2017 he married Gidon Yona in a civil marriage in Denmark, which was later recognized by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior.

Qedar lives in Tel Aviv.

Awards and accolades