Marco Bellocchio, Alba Rohrwacher and Matteo Garrone are among hundreds of Italian cinema professionals who have signed an open letter calling on the Venice Film Festival to acknowledge the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The signatories, who also include international professionals, have gathered under the banner of V4P (Venice4Palestine).
In a long open letter, the signatories urged the Venice Film Festival; its parent body, the Biennale, and the independent parallel sections of 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.”
“Stop the clocks, turn off the stars,” read the opening paragraph of the letter. “The burden is too much to carry on living as before. For almost two years now, images of unmistakable clarity have been reaching us from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Incredulous and helpless, we keep witnessing the torment of a genocide carried out live by the State of Israel in Palestine. No one will ever be able to say: ‘I couldn’t know, I couldn’t imagine, I couldn’t believe’.”
Further signatories include French Venice Golden Lion-winning The Happening director Audrey Diwan, actor Swann Arlaud (Anatomy of a Fall), Bulgarian director Kostantin Bojanov (The Shameless), Italy’s Laura Bispuri (The Peacock’s Paradise), Iranian-French filmmaker Sepideh Farsi (Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk), UK actor Charles Dance, French-Swiss director-actor Laetitia Dosch (Dog on Trial) and Palestinian directorial duo Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser, who won Best Director in Cannes Un Certain Regard this year for their latest film Once Upon A Time In Gaza.
The 82nd Venice Film Festival kicks off on August 27, six weeks shy of the third 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. Israel has said accusations of genocide are “baseless” because the country is not acting with “intent.”
United Nations-backed global hunger monitor the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) announced this week that 500,000 people in the Gaza Strip are officially facing “a man-made” famine in the territory, with at least 132,000 children under five-years-old expected to suffer from acute malnutrition.
The V4P letter stated that Israel’s persecution of the Palestinian population pre-dated October 7 by decades and that the time had come for cinema professionals to take a stand “to uphold the truth about ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, colonialism and all the other crimes against humanity committed by Israel for decades”.
“As the spotlight turns on the Venice Film Festival, we’re in danger of going through yet another major event that remains indifferent to this human, civil, and political tragedy. ‘The show must go on,’ we are told, as we’re urged to look away — as if the ‘film world’ had nothing to do with the ‘real world’,” continued the letter.
“The Biennale and the Venice International Film Festival are supposed to celebrate the power of art as a means of transformation, testimony, representation of humanity, and development of critical consciousness. It is precisely this that makes art an extraordinary vehicle for reflection, active participation and resistance,” it added.
The missive follows in the wake of a wider open letter this week – signed by more than 500 key figures from across the Italian cultural sector including cinema personalities Valeria Golino and Gabriele Salvatores, Vinicio Marchioni and Mimmo Calopresti – calling for a day of mobilisation in support of Palestine during the Venice Film Festival on August 30.
It also comes amid growing international condemnation from world leaders over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza and as well as its recent approval of a controversial settlement project that will cut off the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem.
A number of Western nations, including France, Britain, Canada and Australia, have said they are preparing to recognize a state of Palestine at the upcoming United Nations meeting in September.
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