A letter signed by about 380 entertainment figures, including Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Javier Bardem, criticizing the Cannes Film Festival for not releasing a statement condemning Israel for its war in Gaza against Hamas, was published on Monday, the day before the opening of the festival.
The letter, which appeared on the website of France’s Libération newspaper on Monday evening, said that “the horror of Gaza must not be silenced.”
The letter was dedicated to the memory of Gaza photojournalist/artist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in April, along with 10 of her relatives, including her pregnant sister. Her death came just after it was announced that a film about her life by Sepideh Farsi called Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk had been selected for the ACID section of the film festival.
The letter went on to say, “Since the terrible massacres of 7 October 2023, no foreign journalist has been authorized to enter the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army is targeting civilians. More than 200 journalists have been deliberately killed. Writers, filmmakers and artists are being brutally murdered.”
The letter also criticized the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for not being supportive enough of Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the Oscar-winning documentary about West Bank villages, No Other Land, who was attacked by settlers and arrested by the IDF. He has since been released.
The letter went on to say: “As artists and cultural players, we cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza and this unspeakable news is hitting our communities hard. What is the point of our professions if not to draw lessons from history, to make films that are committed, if we are not present to protect oppressed voices? Why this silence?”
Other signatories included Nadav Lapid, an Israeli director whose latest film, Yes!, is included in the Directors’ Fortnight section of Cannes this year, as well as Mark Ruffalo, Ruben Ostlund (who was the guest of honor at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2022), Pedro Almodovar, Costa-Gavras, and Julie Delpy.
What the letter does not mention
The letter makes no mention of Hamas’s massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, that began the war, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were kidnapped, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza.
It also does not mention the brave Palestinian activists who have lost their lives standing up against Hamas for endangering Palestinian civilians by hiding among them and refusing to let civilians take cover in Gaza’s tunnel network, which is 500 km. long and could provide safety for hundreds of thousands. It also does not call for the release of the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
Several of the signatories have made significant visits to Israel in the past and might have been expected to understand Hamas’s role in the conflict. Gere, who has visited Israel many times, and acted in films directed by three Israeli directors, was a guest of the Sderot Film Festival in 2004, a day after the city was hit by a missile barrage from Gaza. He accepted a gift from Sderot’s mayor of a piece of shrapnel from a missile at his master class there.
Sepideh Farsi, who is Iranian and has been to Israel a number of times, presented her movie about the suppression of pro-democracy protests in Iran, Red Rose, at the Haifa International Film Festival in 2014, just months after a previous war between Israel and Hamas.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, she said that she had hesitated to come to Israel then, but that the festival’s then-director, Pnina Blayer, had convinced her to come.
At the festival, Farsi said, “I am standing before you as an Iranian, and also as a world citizen, to say that this absurd and unfair war could have been avoided… The path toward a mutual understanding, between Iran and Israel… between Israel and Palestine, are long but inevitable ones. It needs patience, and it needs courageous people who don’t give up on their ideals.”