Pink Floyd cofounder Roger Waters, Nobel Prize-winning writer Annie Ernaux and directors Matteo Garrone and Isabel Coixet have lent their support to an open letter calling on the Venice Film Festival, its parent body the Venice Biennale and the audiovisual world in general to take concrete action in support of Palestine.

The letter, published just days before the festival’s opening on September 2, has been organised by the Venice4Palestine collective, which last year lobbied for the festival to publicly acknowledge the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and oversaw a public demonstration on the first weekend.

“One year after its first appeal, Venice4Palestine is once again calling on the Venice Biennale, the Venice International Film Festival and professionals across the film, audiovisual and cultural sectors to take concrete action in support of Palestine,” the body wrote in the open letter.

“Its demands include greater transparency throughout the film industry and the suspension of agreements with organisations and institutions linked to the Israeli government, the introduction of safeguards for professionals who choose to dissociate themselves from such ties.”

The letter comes amid growing international condemnation of Israel‘s destruction and ongoing occupation of Gaza, sparked by the deadly October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks, as well as its expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, coupled with unchecked settler violence against Palestinians.

In the backdrop, the stand-off in Hollywood over the Middle East conflict has ratcheted up in recent days after Paramount accused Mark Ruffalo of using “antisemitic tropes” in a post criticizing the Paramount-WBD merger and raising concerns over its backer Oracle‘s involvement in supplying technology amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The Venice Film Festival and its parent body, which take an unapologetically non-partisan approach in terms of the films and artists they invite, has never made any official comment on its position with regards the Israel-Palestine conflict.

It has, however, taken a bold approach in inviting films capturing the consequences of Israel’s actions against Palestinians, world premiering Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab in competition last year.

The film reconstructed the events surrounding the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, her four cousins, her aunt and uncle, and the two paramedics who came to her rescue, after their car came under fire as they tried to flee Gaza City in January, 2024. Israel announced on August 19 that it was launching a criminal investigation into the incident.

The Venice4Palestine letter also called for the Palestinian flag to be flown throughout the festival to mark the presence in the official selection of Palestinian two films: Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama (Al Mowaten Osama) and Muayad Alayan’s Conversation with the Sea (Hiwar ma’ albahr).

Further non-Palestinian directed films exploring the conflict in selection this year include Israeli director Amos Gitai’s The Road To Jericho and the recently-announced competition addition Naza by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Israeli directors of Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

According to the official synopsis, the film “reveals in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza”.

The hundreds of signatories of the Venice4Palestine letter also include Anna Foglietta, Fabrizio Gifuni, Greta Scarano, Jasmine Trinca, Luigi Lo Cascio, Isabel Coixet, Nan Goldin, Paul Laverty, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Saleh Bakri and CĂ©line Sciamma.

The collective also announced the panel, “And Yet Gaza Continues to Burn – What Is the Point of Seeing If We Do Not Act?”, taking place within the context of the parallel section Giornate degli Autori.

The talk on September 8 will gather international law experts as well as representatives of the Global Sumud Flotilla group, which has tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea, and USB Mare union, which has mobilized Italian dockers to stop the export of arms to Israel.

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