Gaza massacre rocks the most star-studded Venice Film Festival in living memory

Starting Wednesday, some of the luckiest, most privileged, and most pampered people on the planet will gather in Venice. Even the word that defines them underlines their distance from Earth: stars. The 82nd edition of the world’s oldest film festival kicks off with Paolo Sorrentino’s Grace. George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Guillermo del Toro, Kathryn Bigelow, Emma Stone, Oscar Isaac, Sofia Coppola, Al Pacino, Jude Law and Julia Roberts, among many others, will follow. One of the greatest floods of A-listers in living memory, even though the festival has been hosting stars since the 1930s. Until September 6, many spotlights will be on the Lido, the island where the Mostra takes place. And that’s why a growing number of voices are calling for the festival not to forget those who occupy the opposite side of the equation: those who are starving.

The V4P (Venice for Palestine) movement, led by some 1,500 Italian and international film icons — including Marco Bellocchio, Matteo Garrone, Alice Rohrwacher, Ken Loach, and Céline Sciamma — sent a letter to the festival last Friday urging it to officially criticize the “ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing across Palestine.“ In a second, more recent letter, it requested the withdrawal of invitations to two celebrities — Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler — for having previously adopted pro-Israeli positions. In place of the performers, who are participating in Julian Schnabel’s out-of-competition film In the Hand of Dante, the text suggests that a delegation should march “with the Palestinian flag.” To which the festival responded that debate is always welcome, but it would never sanction a ban. Instead of being silenced, the protests have grown stronger. The Mostra hasn’t even started and it’s already experiencing its first major controversy. It’s likely to drag on and extend throughout the entire event: for now, there’s a pro-Palestinian demonstration scheduled for August 30 at the Lido itself.

“The Venice Biennale [which includes the Mostra] is a cultural institution, the most important in Italy, an open space for dialogue. Taking positions or making political statements is not our job. We welcome everyone; we have never censored an artist, nor will we do so now,” Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, told EL PAÍS. “No one can doubt the Biennale’s attitude and the clarity of its position on these tragic issues, nor believe that we are insensitive to what is happening,” he added. He cites the many films regularly shown — and even more so this year — by Iranian directors oppressed by the regime or by Ukrainian authors. And, above all, he noted that the official competition includes The Voice of Hind Rajab, by Kaouther Ben Hania, which recounts the murder of a five-year-old Gazan girl by Israeli troops, using the original audio recordings of the little girl’s distress calls to the Red Crescent. “The fact that we chose it shows that not only do we have no hesitation, but that, in some way, we are aware of and stand by the victims of this absurd war,” Barbera stated.

V4P itself has celebrated the film’s inclusion in the running for the Golden Lion, which is being screened on the same day as In the Hand of Dante. However, they don’t think this is enough. Over the decades, the Venice Film Festival has often intersected with history: it has witnessed wars, revolutions, canceled editions, and even a pandemic. For those who speak out, the massacre in Gaza represents another momentous occasion and demands something more. Donatella Finocchiaro, a member of V4P and the star of Leonardo Di Costanzo’s Elisa, also in competition, told La Repubblica: “In this context, Israeli artists who support and finance the government cannot parade in Venice and receive applause. It’s unbearable […] Saying ‘We are open to dialogue’ means not taking sides. And now we have to speak openly.”

Butler participated in a 2018 gala organized by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which raised $60 million for the troops; Gadot was an IDF soldier between 2005 and 2006 and later became a combat trainer. She is also accused of repeatedly condemning the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, while practically ignoring the massacres carried out by her country. Her most recent project, Snow White, sparked boycotts and protests in the Arab world, Gadot received death threats, and her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was vandalized. In any case, it has already been confirmed that the actress will not be attending the Lido: her presence was never expected, perhaps precisely because of the potential uproar, according to Italian media. There is still no certainty about her co-star. Barbera replied: “I don’t know.”

In the Strip, 62,000 lives have been lost since October 2023, almost half of them women and children, according to figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health; the health system is on the brink of collapse, according to the World Health Organization; at least 1,857 Palestinians have died since May while trying to obtain food at distribution centers, according to UN estimates. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international system supported by the United Nations that gauges the global food situation, has just officially declared famine in Gaza City, something it has only done on three other occasions since its records began in 2004. In Palestine, people die from hunger, gunfire, due to humanitarian aid blocked at the border, or from trying to report all of this as a journalist. This has led the festival’s two parallel sections, International Critics’ Week and Day of Authors, also addressed by V4P’s letter, to express their opinions sharply. “[We] consider increasingly intolerable the criminal actions against the Palestinian people aimed at their total annihilation,” reads the statement issued by the former.

Hence, V4P is calling for greater efforts from the main event: that, during the opening ceremony, Palestinian artists be given space “to offer direct testimony”; and that the Mostra commit to “discontinuing relations with any organization that supports the Israeli government.”

“We don’t have them,” Barbera responds. “You can’t ask an art biennial to solve something that no government has shown itself capable of doing.”

It’s still possible, however, to expect the massacre in Gaza to hover over the entire festival. It affects, after all, the entire world. In Venice, there will be talk of films and a concentration of celebrities so unprecedented that The Hollywood Reporter has described it as “frankly absurd.” Almost every day, industry figures of the caliber of Adam Driver, Alicia Vikander, Jim Jarmush, Greta Gerwig, Jesse Plemons, Laura Dern, Idris Elba, Jason Momoa, and Jacob Elordi will appear on screen and in front of microphones at press conferences. Who knows if they’ll talk about Gaza? The truth is, it’s impossible not to see what’s happening, even from the stars.

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