23/09/2025 - After the impressive display of support promoted by Venice4Palestine during the last Venice Film Festival, the Basque gathering has also demonstrated its solidarity

Producer Esther García, recipient of this year's Donostia Award, showing solidarity for Palestine (© Gari Garaialde/SSIFF)

The international film industry is increasingly taking a stand on the situation in Gaza and Palestine, with significant developments and specific demands across festivals, funding mechanisms and institutional responses.

Over 4,500 artists, including notable figures like Javier Bardem and Emma Stone, have signed a boycott appeal instigated by Film Workers for Palestine. The movement calls on the international film community to refuse silence, racism and dehumanisation, as well as to “do everything humanly possible” to end complicity in the oppression targeting Palestine.

The pledge, inspired by the historical precedent of filmmakers who refused to screen their work in apartheid South Africa, asks signatories not to screen films at, appear at, or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions, including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies, which are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

This appeal follows the campaign addressed to MUBI (Hey Mubi), and supported by prominent directors such as Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismäki and Miguel Gomes, to end its complicity with Sequoia Capital, a company that has invested heavily in Israeli military technology companies.

After the impressive display of solidarity promoted by Venice4Palestine during the last Venice Film Festival, the San Sebastián International Film Festival has also shown its support for Palestine, with Pedro Almodóvar and other prominent figures delivering speeches, and high-profile guests such as Donostia Award recipient Esther García wearing "Stop Genocide" badges in watermelon colours on the red carpet.

Meanwhile, the Sumud Global Flotilla, whose boats carry activists, doctors, journalists and politicians, also includes numerous film workers (such as Adèle Haenel), while an extraordinary concert in London, Together for Palestine, featured a huge number of celebrities just a few days ago.

In Israel, more than 50 prominent Israeli documentary filmmakers have published an open letter expressing "profound shame" over Israel's actions in Gaza and declaring their support for the international boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, clearly calling out as "mass murder" and "genocide" the acts that the Israeli state is committing in Gaza.

However, Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar announced funding cuts for the Ophir Awards, the Israeli film prizes, starting with the 2026 ceremony, basing his decision on the prizes awarded during this year's event. He called it “scandalous” that the top prize was awarded to the film The Sea, an Arabic-language drama about a Palestinian boy from the West Bank who risks his life to go to the beach in Tel Aviv. “The scandalous victory of The Sea at the ceremony sparked outrage among many Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers who dedicate their lives to defending the homeland,” Zohar wrote in a statement, as reported in the newspaper Haaretz.

The awards ceremony itself was politically charged, with winners wearing anti-war messages on black T-shirts, reading "A child is a child is a child," while others displayed images of hostages. Many called for an end to the war in Gaza.

As the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has determined that Israel's war on Gaza must be classified as genocide, following the lead of the International Court of Justice and statements by dozens of international associations, the cinema community's response reflects broader debates around art, politics and moral responsibility in times of conflict. The growing solidarity movement suggests this issue will continue to shape festival programming, funding decisions and industry relationships in the months to come.