In 2021, many cinephiles and critics welcomed Netflix’s release of several Palestinian films as part of a curated section on the streaming giant’s platform, “Palestinian Stories”. After all, in a world where festivalgoers in the US and Europe were aware that many films from the country had been made over the years and won significant acclaim and awards, the idea that the world’s largest streaming platform would provide a space for 100-million people to finally see them was one to be celebrated.
The Palestinian Stories launch was seen as a commitment to addressing the mainstream representational balance of stories coming from the region by highlighting 32 films that were either made by Palestinian directors or focused specifically on the Palestinian experience. Those films, including works by Oscar-nominated directors Elia Suleiman and Hany Abu Sahad, remained available on Netflix until most of them disappeared from the platform in October last year.
According to Netflix, that wasn’t because of a change of direction in the wake of the attacks by Hamas on October 7 2023, and the subsequent brutal retaliation on Gaza by Israeli forces, but rather because the licences to show the films had expired. Human rights and pro-Palestinian cultural organisations cried foul, but Netflix did not renew the licences, and the films are no longer available, despite the outrage on social media and an angry backlash against the streaming giant.
In August last year a group of almost 70 Palestinian filmmakers, including Suleiman, Sahad and Bafta-winner Farah Nabulsi, signed a letter accusing Hollywood of dehumanising Palestinians on-screen for decades and helping indirectly to contribute, through these one-sided representations, to the destruction of Gaza and the killing of its citizens. The letter also condemned the “inhumanity and racism shown by some in the Western entertainment industry towards our people, even during this most difficult of times”.
The letter ended by calling on international colleagues “to speak out against this genocide and the erasure, racism and censorship that enable it … and to stand against working with production companies that are deeply complicit in dehumanising Palestinians or whitewashing and justifying Israel’s crimes against us”.
The letter and its call to action were widely reported at the time, but its effect seemed to be limited within the mainstream movie world. However, the Gaza issue did fan furious flames within Hollywood, with pro-Israel supporters such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot, Amy Schumer and Aaron Sorkin decrying criticism of the country as anti-Semitic, and other openly anti-Israel stars such as Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem seizing every opportunity to call for a ceasefire and demand that Isreal be called to account for perpetrating genocide.
Protests at 2024 film festivals — including Berlin, Cannes and Venice — that were dismissed as only a few rabble rousers have this year grown in number and volume, with Gaza continuing to fuel increasingly furious and loud outrage.
Actors speak out and push for protection
Earlier this year many Hollywood actors, including Pedro Pascal, Joaquin Phoenix and Ralph Fiennes, signed a letter condemning the industry’s silence over Israel’s campaign in Gaza and last year members of the Screen Actors Guild urged their union reps to protect those who have spoken out from being blacklisted by the industry.
This week, Hollywood film workers and actors finally seemed to be listening to the call made more than a year ago by their Palestinian colleagues when, inspired by the 1980s’ Filmmakers Against Apartheid movement, hundreds of actors, directors and other film industry professionals signed a pledge committing to not work with Israeli film institutions “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.
Since the pledge was first reported on Monday, the list of signatories has ballooned into the thousands. It includes longtime pro-Palestinian supporters such as Swinton, Ruffalo and Bardem and many other well-known names such as Ayo Edebiri, Riz Ahmed, Olivia Colman, Yorgos Lanthimos and Ava DuVernay.
The boycott would include Israel’s major film festivals, including Jerusalem, Haifa and Docaviv and “the vast majority of Israeli film production and distribution companies, sales agents, cinemas and other film institutions”, who “have never endorsed the full, international, recognised rights of the Palestinian people”.
Pledge targets institutions, not individuals
The pledge is careful to emphasise that its call for a boycott is directed against institutions and not individuals, pointing out that “there are also 2-million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and Palestinian civil society has developed context-sensitive guidelines for that community”.
The Guardian described the pledge as “one of the most prominent cultural boycott efforts announced against Israel since the assault on Gaza started, coming nearly one year after more than 1,000 writers announced a similar pledge”, but whether it will have a big effect remains to be seen.
For South Africans who grew up under apartheid, when between hysterical government censorship and the anti-apartheid cultural and sports boycotts, we were starved of cultural output and had little opportunity to legitimise our mythologised sporting prowess, the efficacy of boycotts may be easy to see. As far as the Israeli film industry is concerned, the many highly visible signatories to the latest pledge are, according to a statement released by the Israeli Producers Association this week, “targeting the wrong people” and the call for a boycott is “profoundly misguided”.
Israeli film industry responds
The statement claims that “for decades, we Israeli artists, storytellers, and creators have been the primary voices allowing audiences to hear and witness the complexity of the conflict, including Palestinian narratives and criticism of Israeli state policies. We work with Palestinian creators, telling our shared stories and promoting peace and an end to violence through thousands of films, TV series, and documentaries…. This shortsighted act seeks to eliminate precisely the collaborative efforts working towards ending violence and achieving peace.”
Whether you believe these claims, they’d certainly be easier to judge for yourself were streamers, such as Netflix, to offer more films and series made by Palestinians themselves.
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