Thousands of film workers vow to boycott Israeli film institutions ‘implicated in genocide’
Thousands of actors and film industry professionals have refused collaboration with Israeli film institutions they say are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.
Over 3,900 film-makers and actors, including Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Tilda Swinton, Rooney Mara and Julie Christie signed a pledge committing to not screen films by, or work with, what it termed complicit institutions.
These include festivals, cinema, broadcasters and production companies responsible for “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them”.
The statement, which was published by the group Film Workers for Palestine, said that: “As film-makers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognise the power of cinema to shape perceptions”.
“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.”
Invoking the cultural boycott that contributed to ending apartheid in South Africa, the film-makers said they were answering a call by Palestinian artists urging the international film industry to “do everything humanly possible’ to end "complicity in their oppressions”.
An FAQ accompanying the pledge stated that “the vast majority of Israeli film production and distribution companies, sales agents, cinemas and other film institutions have never endorsed the full, internationally recognised rights of the Palestinian people”, while acknowledging that “a few Israeli film entities that are not complicit”.
It emphasised that the pledge “takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity”, and that it does not preclude signatories from working with Israeli individuals, noting that “there are also 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and Palestinian civil society has developed context-sensitive guidelines for that community”.
David Farr, an acclaimed British Jewish writer and director who signed the pledge, said: “As the descendant of Holocaust survivors, I am distressed and enraged by the actions of the Israeli state, which has for decades enforced an apartheid system on the Palestinian people whose land they have taken, and which is now perpetuating genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
"In this context I cannot support my work being published or performed in Israel.”
'We aren't doing enough'
In response, the Israeli Producers Association said that the pledge was “profoundly misguided” and is taking aim “at the wrong people”.
Helene Schumann, the director of the Israeli Film Festival in Paris, vowed to “never alienate” herself from the festival and to “continue to stand by the side of Israeli cinema in all its diversity”.
Others accepted the pledge as a call for Israeli artists to “do more” to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and that the price paid by Israeli film-makers is one worth paying.
Cinematographer, director and producer Avigail Sperber said that she acknowledged that “we aren’t doing enough” and that the “responsibility is ours as well”.
“Our films will also suffer. But the price is worth the chance of bringing an end to the bloodshed and beginning to heal this bloody region,” she added.
Meanwhile, director and producer Rachel Leah Jones said the call was an “invitation to do more, resist more”.
The pledge comes amid growing condemnation by the entertainment industry of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.
It follows an open letter signed by hundreds of film-makers and actors - including Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Ralph Fiennes and director Guillermo del Toro - denouncing the film industry's silence over the genocide.