The Venice International Film Festival will not hold a traditional jury press conference this year, according to a report from Deadline.
Along with several other competition-based film festivals like Cannes and Berlin, Venice typically opens with a panel in which jurors are made available to press inquiries. This year’s edition has tapped Maggie Gyllenhaal as jury chair, joined by jurors Kaouther Ben Hania, Daniel Blumberg, Francesco Casetti, Xavier Giannoli, Shahrbanoo Sadat and Johnnie To.
The decision to nix the panel comes as an open letter from the group Venice4Palestine has garnered more than 200 signatures from film industry figures, including from names like Guy Pearce, Céline Sciamma, Alia Shawkat and Palestinian directors Arab and Tarzan Nasser. The appeal, titled “Yet Gaza Continues to Burn,” urges the festival to “put Palestine in the spotlight” and include the Palestinian flag in the group of national flags that the festival hoists on site to represent its global selection of films.
The letter also includes demands for “transparency in all phases of the supply chain, suspending any agreement with bodies and institutions linked to the Israeli government” and the creation of “a protection structure that defends workers in the sector from the professional risks of a concrete commitment against genocide.”
Per Deadline, the festival denied that the decision to forgo a jury press conference was spurred by Venice4Palestine or other political pressures, instead explaining it was a matter of a “scheduling conflict.”
Representatives for the festival and Gyllenhaal did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment.
The decision comes as the topic of Israel and Palestine’s war has become central to conversations around film festivals. Coverage of last year’s Venice jury press conference was dominated by that edition’s president, filmmaker Alexander Payne, declining to answer a question about Israel’s war on Gaza.
“Quite frankly, I feel a little bit unprepared for that question. I’m here to judge and talk about cinema,” Payne said at the time. “My political views, I’m sure, are in agreement with many of yours. But as far as my relationship with the festival and what the industry does, I have to think about that for a while to give you a measured response.”
At a panel at the Berlinale in February, film director and jury president Wim Wenders argued that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics” and that “we have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians,” responding to a question noting the German government’s “support” of Israel through its war with Gaza and asking the jury if they “support this selective treatment of human rights.” Berlinale released a statement in support of the jury following backlash to Wenders’ comments.
This year’s Venice International Film Festival will feature two Palestinian productions, “Citizen Osama” (dir. Ahmed Hassouna) and “Conversation With the Sea” (dir. Muayad Alayan). Additionally, two of the documentary filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning “No Other Land” have also reteamed for another Gaza-set doc, “Naza,” which will debut in competition at the festival.
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