More than 1,500 film professionals, including directors and actors, have joined Venice4Palestine, a campaign urging the Venice Film Festival to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
They are among hundreds of people attempting to draw the spotlight from the star-studded event on to Palestine. Protesters unveiled a “Free Palestine” banner while others waved Palestinian flags at the opening of the festival on Wednesday. Another group of activists have organised a march on Saturday at the Santa Maria Elisabetta avenue, the location of the long-running festival.
In an open letter to organisers last week, Venice4Palestine demanded the festival withdraw invitations to Israeli actress Gal Gadot and Scottish actor Gerard Butler. Gadot, a former IDF soldier, and Butler are part of an ensemble cast for In the Hand of Dante, a drama by acclaimed director Julian Schnabel. The film is scheduled to premiere at the festival on Wednesday.
Venice4Palestine, which includes top Italian film personalities as well as Iranian-French filmmaker Sepideh Farsi and Palestinian directorial duo Arab and Tarzan Nasser, urged the Venice Film Festival “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”.
“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,” the group wrote.
“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.”
Gadot has been open about her support for her country and its policies, particularly during Israel's war on Gaza, in which more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023. While Butler has not spoken openly about the crisis, he was widely criticised for attending a Friends of the IDF gala in Los Angeles in 2018.
The star-studded cast of In The Hand of Dante also include Oscar Isaac, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese and Jason Momoa.
A representative for Gadot told Deadline, however, that the actor “was never able nor was ever confirmed as attending the Venice Film Festival”.
The Venice Film Festival has responded to Venice4Palestine, saying the event has always been a place of “open discussion and sensitivity with regard to all the most pressing issues facing society and the world”. It pointed out the inclusion of Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s, The Voice of Hind Rajab. The film dramatises the final hours of five-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab, who was killed by Israeli fire in January 2024 after being stranded in a car with her dead relatives in Gaza.
Venice4Palestine posted a response, saying it welcomed the inclusion of Ben Hania's film but was “disheartened by the response”.
“The official communication from the Biennale still chooses not to mention Palestine and the ongoing genocide, nor the State of Israel that is perpetrating it. If the Biennale truly wishes to be a ‘place of open and sensitive dialogue', then that space must first and foremost be a space of truth,” the group said.
Organisers of the Saturday protest said they “have a duty to make the voices of all those who are outraged and rebelling heard”.
“The genocide is there for all to see,” they said. “The Israeli army in Gaza is massacring the Palestinian civilian population, targeting hospitals, refugee camps, food and water distribution points, schools, universities, churches and mosques.
“Let us turn the spotlight of the festival on Palestine.”
