With the curtain about to go up on the 82nd Venice Film Festival, a press conference was held this morning in front of the event’s main venue to promote a march that will take place on the Lido this Saturday denouncing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the foreground of the Sala Grande, a dozen or so supporters waving Palestinian flags chanted, “Free, free Palestine” and “Stop, stop genocide” before a spokeswoman, Martina Vergnano, addressed members of the media.
The worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is set to take center stage at the festival.
Hundreds of local political and grassroots organizations have said they would join the “Stop the Genocide in Palestine” protest, which is taking place on the sidelines of the Mostra and is not part of the Biennale. Earlier this week, they wrote, “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.”
Vergnano said (translated from Italian) that the “appeal has circulated enormously” with “hundreds of signatures from political groups, associations and groups from the Veneto region, but also well beyond. That is, hundreds of signatures and endorsements, even from the world of cinema and from within the exhibition.”
The intention of the march, she said, is to “shine the spotlight of the film festival in the right direction.”
Reporters gather in front of the #VeniceFilmFestival red carpet for a press conference about the Gaza protest taking place on Aug 30 at the festival.
Organizers are protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and are calling for an “end to the genocide” and a “free Palestine” pic.twitter.com/OJB6MsYKLN
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) August 27, 2025
She noted that on Saturday there will be a motorboat leaving from Marghera “to allow even those who aren’t coming from Venice to reach the film festival together.”
Currently, she said, “there are hundreds of people signed up” and that “there are artists, directors and actors who are mobilizing in this direction, so we hope to be many, many of us.”
She was asked if it was “right that some Israeli artists, directors, or personalities be removed as a sign of a process, or should culture build bridges?”
Her response: “I believe that… institutions must take a stance, and clearly, in this sense, it’s emblematic how an institution chooses to relate to that, to what’s happening outside.”
Last weekend, an open letter was signed by hundreds of Italian cinema professionals gathered under the banner of 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 Biennale and the 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.”
As proof of this, they cited the 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.
As Deadline reported earlier today, Hollywood luminaries Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuaron and Jonathan Glazer are among heavyweights to get behind The Voice of Hind Rajab ahead of its Venice world premiere next week.
The Venice Film Festival kicks off this evening, 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.
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.”
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