More than 1,800 film industry figures, including major Hollywood actors, vowed to boycott Israeli cinema bodies they claimed were “implicated in genocide” in Gaza, in an open letter published Monday.
“We pledge not to screen films, appear at, or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions — including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters, and production companies — that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” read the letter published in The Guardian newspaper.
The signatories included British stars Olivia Colman, Riz Ahmed, Aimee Lou Wood, Josh O’Connor, Tilda Swinton and Joe Alwyn (the latter of whom had a supporting role in the recent post-Holocaust drama “The Brutalist”); American actors Mark Ruffalo, Emma Stone, Ayo Edebiri and Cynthia Nixon; Spanish actor Javier Bardem; Mexican filmmaker Gael García Bernal; and filmmakers Ken Loach, Yorgos Lanthimos, Adam McKay and Ava DuVernay (the latter’s film “Origin” compared Nazi rule to slavery and global caste systems.)
They join several progressive Jews who have long been vocal pro-Palestinian activists, including Ilana Glazer, Hannah Einbinder, Emma Seligman and Wallace Shawn.
The letter, organized by the group Film Workers for Palestine, said it was inspired by filmmakers who had refused to screen their work in apartheid South Africa.
The pledge is distinct from other previous arts and culture Israel boycotts in naming specific Israeli cultural institutions that the letter’s signatories are boycotting. Those include major Israeli film festivals like the Jerusalem Film Festival, Haifa International Film Festival, Docaviv and TLVfest.
“In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror,” the letter read.
“We answer the call of Palestinian filmmakers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanization, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression,” the film workers said in their petition.
Sunrise Coigney (L) and Mark Ruffalo (R) attend the 96th Annual Academy Awards on March 10, 2024, in Hollywood, California. Ruffalo is wearing a pin depicting an orange hand holding a heart, which calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. (JC Olivera/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP)
The institutions to be boycotted would include any involved in “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid,” or those that partnered with the Israeli government.
The group behind the letter cited the Jerusalem Film Festival and the Docaviv documentary film festival, which “continue to partner with the Israeli government.”
“The vast majority of Israeli film production and distribution companies, sales agents, cinemas and other film institutions have never endorsed the full, internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people,” according to a FAQ document accompanying the letter.
The pledge does not specifically target Israeli individuals. Instead, the document says the “refusal takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity,” and that “a few Israeli film entities are not complicit.”
Several open letters signed by prominent figures from the worlds of cinema, music and literature have been published as pressure mounts on the Israeli government to end the devastating, nearly two-year war in Gaza, and urgently address the humanitarian crisis there.
Demonstrators demanding the boycott of Israel during the Olympic Games protest outside the Paris Olympic organizing committee headquarters, April 30, 2024, in Saint-Denis, outside Paris. (AP Photo/Alexander Turnbull/ File)
An Italian filmmakers’ collective, Venice4Palestine, urged the city’s film festival in August to take a stand, with a letter gathering 2,000 signatures, including from Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro.
Last month, some 200 British and Irish writers called for an “immediate and complete” boycott of Israel, “until the people of Gaza are adequately provided with drinking water, food, and medical supplies, and until all other forms of relief and necessity are restored to the people of Gaza under the aegis of the United Nations.”
The writers also said: “We demand the return of all hostages and those imprisoned without charge or trial on all sides. We demand an end to settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank. We demand the immediate and permanent ceasefire and cessation of violence by Hamas and Israel.”
“We stand in solidarity with the resistance of Palestinian, Jewish, and Israeli people to the genocidal policies of the current Israeli government. We note that prominent and respected Israeli and Jewish groups in Israel and other countries, including many of our fellow writers, have recently called for serious and impactful sanctions on Israeli institutions, to which we add, on, and only on, objectively culpable individuals. A boycott is the only sanction an individual can apply,” the letter said.
Israel denies carrying out genocide in the Strip, saying it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities during the war and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
