Dozens of Hollywood A-listers will descend on the Venice film festival this week, but activists hope to shift the spotlight from the red carpet to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
With an anti-war demonstration planned for one of the festival’s biggest nights on Saturday, questions over the biennale’s stance on Gaza dominated Wednesday’s launch event.
Scores of local political and grassroots organisations are expected to join the march, running under the title Stop the Genocide – Free Palestine.
More than 1,500 people, including industry figures, have signed an open letter from the group Venice4Palestine (V4P) calling on the 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”.
They have also urged the organisers to withdraw invitations to the actors Gerard Butler and Gal Gadot over their previous support for Israel – both star in Julian Schnabel’s new film In The Hand of Dante, which is premiering on the Lido.
Gadot has spoken out against Hamas and in support of the Israeli hostages but has also called for a diplomatic solution to the Gaza-Israel conflict.
Butler attended a gala for the Friends of the IDF in Los Angeles in 2018 but has not commented publicly on the events in Israel and Gaza since 7 October 2023.
The festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, told a press conference on Wednesday: “We have been asked to turn down invitations to artists, we will not do that – if they want to be at the festival, they will be here.
“On the other hand, we have never hesitated to clearly declare our huge sadness and suffering vis-a-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine. The death of civilians and especially of children, who are victims, the collateral damage of a war which nobody has been able to terminate yet. I think there are no doubts in regard to the biennale’s position on this.”
Reports suggested Gadot had dropped out of the festival after the scrutiny, but Barbera has said the Snow White star was never planning to attend. Gadot said earlier this month that she credits a “pressure on celebrities to speak out against Israel” with the failure of last year’s live-action remake of Snow White
The Sideways and Holdover director Alexander Payne, who is chairing the competition jury this year, said he felt “a little bit unprepared” for questions about his stance on the crisis in Gaza.
“I’m here to judge and talk about cinema. My political views, I’m sure, are in agreement with many of yours. But I need to think about that to give a measured response,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, a group of activists held a demonstration in front of the festival red carpet promoting Saturday’s march. International signatories to the V4P letter include Ken Loach, Céline Sciamma, Claire Simon, Audrey Diwan and the Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska, whose new film Mother – about Mother Teresa – opened the festival’s Orizzonti sidebar.
Asked whether she would attend the march, Mitevska said that she would be “leaving Venice unfortunately”. But she added: “I can tell you what Mother Teresa would do. She would be there helping. She would be there under fire taking care of things.
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“We live in such a strange world. So much violence. We are like prisoners of capitalism and egoism – me, me, me. What about humanity, what about doing and giving? So let’s do and give.”
Shortly afterwards, the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, whose new feature La Grazia officially opens the festival on Wednesday night, was asked whether he had had any conversations with the film’s distributor, Mubi, over the streaming company taking on an investor with ties to the Israeli military. Last week, Sorrentino called what is happening in Gaza a “genocide”.
The director said he would “like to take the opportunity to give the floor to somebody from Mubi who is here in the room”. A representative from Mubi declined to answer.
The Venice film festival has repeatedly emphasised it has always been a place of “open discussion and sensitivity with regard to all the most pressing issues facing society and the world”.
It has pointed to its selection for the main competition this year of the 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 the inclusion of the Israeli director Dani Rosenberg’s Of Dogs and Men, capturing the aftermath of 7 October 2023, in last year’s lineup.
Barbera told the Guardian: “We are living in really dangerous times. Film-makers are responding with a return to a cinema of reality. They don’t always provide answers, but they always ask questions.”
The Oscar winners Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonathan Glazer, and the Oscar nominee Rooney Mara, recently joined Ben Hania’s project as executive producers.
