More than 300 directors and actors participated Paradise Now Film director Hany Abu-Assad has called for a boycott of Israeli films screening at this year's Venice Film Festival in Italy, claiming the films are engaged in so-called “artwashing” of “apartheid, occupation and now genocide.”
The petition accuses Israel of numerous crimes but makes no mention of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that sparked the Gaza war, nor does it refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization at all.
The two Israeli films at the center of the boycott are Amos Gitai's Why War? Dani Rosenberg's Hebrew Al-Qura'vim Be'anasim (Dogs and Men). The latter title explicitly references the Hamas terror attack of October 7th, and was filmed in the early days of the current Gaza war.
“Like Dogs and humans: why war? “The work was made by a complicit Israeli production company that, through its silence and active participation in artwashing, is complicit in apartheid, occupation and now genocide,” said the letter, issued by the group Artists for Palestine Italy.
The festival itself has “maintained silence about Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people. This silence deeply outrages us.”
Hany Abu Assad attends the Hudaz Salon photocall during the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on December 7, 2021. (Courtesy of Red Sea International Film Festival, Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images)
Drawing on postmodern decolonization studies, the letter denounces Israel's “crimes and institutions of colonial oppression against the Palestinian people.”
“Artwashing Israel's genocide in Gaza on the international cultural stage, including at a film festival, is deeply immoral,” the letter concludes.
Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad is one of the most prominent signatories. His films include Paradise Now and Omar Both films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Festival director Alberto Barbera said he had no plans to withdraw the two Israeli films from this year's festival, which is currently running.
“It is understandable that the filmmakers would sign the petition in support of the Palestinian people and especially their terrible plight. It is painful to even think about. What Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing in Gaza is a war crime, as was October 7,” he said. said deadline.
“But we would never withdraw a film for ideological reasons. The film that 300 filmmakers asked us to withdraw is in no way an anti-Palestinian film, quite the opposite.”
Israeli director Amos Gitai defended his film at a press conference at the festival last week, saying the movie received no government funding.
“The film isn't actually about Israel or Palestine, even though they like to think they're the center of the world,” he was quoted as saying. “There is no center of the world. The Earth is round.” [It’s] “This is a very important conflict, but it's not the only conflict on the planet,” he said.
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