The worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is set to take center stage at the upcoming 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival.
Hundreds of local political and grassroot groups announced on Monday that they would be joining a march protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, on the main Santa Maria Elisabetta avenue on August 30.
“At a time when the eyes of the world will be on Venice and the Film Festival, we have a duty to make the voices of all those who are outraged and rebelling heard: let us therefore turn the spotlight of the Festival on Palestine,” the bodies said in a statement.
“The genocide is there for all to see. The Israeli army in Gaza is massacring the Palestinian civilian population, targeting hospitals, refugee camps, food and water distribution points, schools, universities, churches and mosques,” it continued.
“The denial of humanitarian aid, water and food is a strategy of genocide, carried out with the complicity of the U.S. and European governments, including the Italian one, which continues to support Israel economically, politically and diplomatically, continuing to supply weapons and maintaining trade agreements.”
The Venice Film Festival kicks off on August 27, six weeks shy of the second anniversary of the Hamas terror attacks on Southern Israel on October 7 2023, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in the taking of 251 hostages.
At least 61,000 people living in the Gaza Strip have died in Israel’s subsequent military campaign aimed at wiping out Hamas and recovering the hostages.
United Nations-backed global hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), announced last week that 500,000 people in the Gaza Strip are officially facing “a man-made” famine, with at least 132,000 children under five-years-old expected to suffer from acute malnutrition.
Israel has said accusations of genocide are “baseless” because the country is not acting with “intent.” Leading Israel-based human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights have countered this, saying last month that Israel was carrying out “a clear, intentional attack on civilians in order to destroy a group.”
Monday’s announcement follows an open letter over the weekend signed by hundreds of Italian cinema professionals gathered under the banner of the Venice4Palestine (V4P).
They called on the Venice Film Festival; its parent body, the Biennale, and the independent parallel sections of Giornate degli Autori (previously known as Venice Days) and the International Critics’ Week, “to be more courageous and clear in condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing across Palestine carried out by the Israeli government and army.”
The statement also decried the deaths of close to 250 Palestinian media workers since the beginning of the Israeli military campaign as well as attacks on journalists in the West Bank. Monday’s statement by the Veneto grassroot bodies coincided with the killing of another four journalists in Gaza earlier in the day.
The Biennale and the Venice Film Festival responded to the letter in a written statement saying that throughout their histories they had always been “places of open discussion and sensitivity with regard to all the most pressing issues facing society and the world.”
The festival pointed to its selection for the main competition this year of Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, about the killing of a six-year-old girl as her family fled Gaza City in January, 2024, as well as Of Dogs and Men by Israeli director Dani Rosenberg, capturing the aftermath of October 7, 2023, for the Orizzonti sidebar in 2024.
In a follow-up statement, V4P said it “warmly welcomed” messages of solidarity from Giornate degli Autori and Critics’ Week, but was “disheartened by the response” from the Biennale and Venice Film Festival saying it failed to address the substance of their letter.
“Signatures to our open letter have already surpassed 1,500 in just a few days: film clubs, festivals, professional associations, unions, cultural organizations, as well as directors, actors, screenwriters, and all the workers across the various sectors of cinema, art, culture, education, and information. A substantial and transversal part of our industry. If it took only a few hours to bring together so many, it means that Italian cinema has finally chosen to stand with the Palestinian people – attacked and massacred for decades – and no longer recognizes a place for half-words and false neutrality,” V4P said in its follow-up statement.
“Yet the official communication from the Biennale still chooses not to mention Palestine and the ongoing genocide, nor the State of Israel that is perpetrating it. If the Biennale truly wishes to be a ‘place of open and sensitive dialogue, then that space must first and foremost be a space of truth.”
The group added it appreciated the selection of films such as The Voice of Hind Rajab for Competition but questioned the presence of stars Gerard Butler and Gal Gadot.
The actors are expected on the Lido this year for the world premiere of Julian Schnabel’s In The Hand of Dante in which they star alongside Oscar Isaac, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese, Jason Momoa, Louis Cancelmi and Franco Nero.
Butler attended a gala for the Friends of the IDF Western Region Gala in Los Angeles in 2018 which raised $60 million for Israeli Army programs, but has not commented publicly on the events in Israel and Gaza in the wake of October 7.
Israel-born star Gadot has spoken out against Hamas and in support for the Israeli hostages but has also called for a diplomatic solution to the Gaza-Israel conflict and expressed an anti-war stance.
Long criticized by pro-Palestinian groups, she was also attacked by Israeli right-wing media in July for her call for an end to the war in Gaza during an honorary award acceptance speech at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
In The Hand Of Dante, a thriller revolving around the origins of a manuscript believed to be Dante’s The Divine Comedy written in the poet’s own hand, world premieres in Venice on September 3, the same day as The Voice of Hind Rajab.
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