A group of filmmakers and artists have issued an open letter to the Venice Film Festival which is due from September 2.
The letter asks the festival to be more vocally pro-Palestine.
It also urges for suspension of any agreements with the Israeli government.
Filmmakers and artists are urging the Venice Film Festival “to take concrete action in support of Palestine" in an open letter. The group, which goes by Venice4Palestine (or V4P, for short), issued the appeal to the festival and its parent organization, Venice Biennale, under the title “Yet Gaza Continues to Burn.”
“A year ago, thousands of people joined the Venice4Palestine appeal to put Palestine in the spotlight of the Film Festival and bring the resistance of the Palestinian people to the center of public discourse: finally there was open talk of genocide instead of war,” the letter, which has attracted more than 200 signatures, begins. The passage was translated from Italian. “While we asked Biennale and Mostra to take a clear position and film workers to express their solidarity, the vision of ‘Sawt Hind Rajab’ (‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’), during the festival, suddenly seemed to take charge of those instances, generating a collective emotion and indignation.”
Among the letter’s 200-plus signatories are actors Alia Shawkat and Guy Pearce, French filmmaker Céline Sciamma, Nobel Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Palestinian directors Arab and Tarzan Nasser, and actress Indya Moore, who appeared in last year’s Golden Lion winner, Father Mother Sister Brother.
“We ask the Exhibition to also hoist the Palestinian flag for the duration of the festival alongside all the other flags that represent the films present in the official selection, as per practice and as already recognized by the official sources of information of the Exhibition,” the letter demands.
Open Letter To Venice Film Festival
The hundreds of signatories of the Venice4Palestine letter also entail Anna Foglietta, Fabrizio Gifuni, Greta Scarano, Jasmine Trinca, Luigi Lo Cascio, Isabel Coixet, Nan Goldin, Paul Laverty, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Saleh Bakri and Céline Sciamma.
The letter also calls for “transparency in all phases of the supply chain, suspending any agreement with bodies and institutions linked to the Israeli government” and the formation of “a protection structure that defends workers in the sector from the professional risks of a concrete commitment against genocide.”
NAZA, a new hot-button documentary from No Other Land directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, was added on Monday to the Venice competition lineup. It's the only documentary in the main competition.
The collective also declared the panel “And Yet Gaza Continues to Burn – What Is the Point of Seeing if We Do Not Act?,” which is set to happen under the aegis of the fest’s separately run section Giornate degli Autori, also known as Venice Days.
The 83rd Venice Film Festival will run from Sept. 2 to Sept. 12.
