WHEN moviegoers last saw the stoic young Israeli Army officer Yossi, he had lost a fellow soldier in a botched ambush along the mountainous, snow-covered border of Lebanon. Yossi stood by silently as a young woman told the mother of the dead soldier, named Jagger, that she had been his girlfriend, a fantasy that might have brought some comfort to the bereaved parents. But Yossi alone knew the truth: He had been Jagger’s lover.

Ten years later this survivor from the director Eytan Fox’s groundbreaking 2002 Israeli film, “Yossi & Jagger,” is back in “Yossi,” opening in New York on Friday.

During the decade since the first film came out, the treatment of gay and lesbian Israelis has undergone a liberalizing transformation, and the country’s cinema has experienced a creative renaissance. Mr. Fox has been a central figure in both cases.

In much the way that “Will & Grace” and “Modern Family” have been credited with advancing the cultural acceptance of gay men and lesbians in the United States, Mr. Fox’s films anticipated societal change by being the first to portray gay Israeli men in everyday situations and free of stereotypes.