Israel-Palestine Debate Rocks Amsterdam Doc Festival
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has become a site for heated debate over the Israel-Hamas war, with the festival drawing protests from both sides.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia confirms that “around 10” directors have pulled their films from the festival lineup in protest over comments made by the IDFA. The Palestinian Film Institute (PFI) over the weekend also announced it was pulling out from all organized activities at the IDFA film market.
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“We respect the choices and the decisions of all filmmakers, whether that is to speak their minds on stage or online or to withdraw their films, all forms of peaceful protest, including criticism of our work, we honor and respect,” Nyrabia tells THR.
On Monday, the PFI staged a demonstration outside the main IDFA headquarters to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, and to criticize the IDFA for its response to a protest on the festival’s opening night, which saw three demonstrators display a banner with the slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”
Nyrabia was captured on video seemingly applauding the protesters.
Many Jews consider the slogan to be inherently antisemitic and a threat to wipe out the state of Israel. Supporters of the Palestinian cause see it as a rallying call to end the fragmentation of Palestinian land and Israeli occupation. Last week, the United States House of Representatives voted to censure Palestinian-American Congressperson Rashida Tlaib for her use of the phrase in a post on X, citing its “antisemitic” connotations.
Nyrabia tells THR he did not see the banner and slogan until after the protest and says he was applauding another banner held up in the audience that read “Silence is Violence,” a statement he took to be in support of freedom of expression.
Following the demonstration, several prominent members of the Israeli film community, including the chair of the Israeli Film Academy Assaf Amir; Hagit Ben Yaakov, chairwoman of the Israeli Documentary Forum; and Adar Shafran, chairman of the Israeli Producers Union, signed a letter addressed to the IDFA and the international film industry in which they called the banner “a personal attack against us,” and called on the festival and its director to distance themselves from “these calls for violence.”
The IDFA did just that, releasing a statement online saying the “from the river to the sea” slogan “does not represent us, and we do not endorse it in any way. We are truly sorry that it was hurtful to many.” The festival released a separate statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, as well as for the distribution of humanitarian aid and the “restoration of basic services and infrastructure” in Gaza.
But several filmmakers, and the Palestine Film Institute, took offense at the festival’s categorization of the “from the river to the sea” slogan as “hateful.” The PFI said doing so “unjustly criminalizes Palestinian voices and narratives” and called on directors to withdraw their films from the festival in protest.
Several did, including Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory, who pulled her non-fiction short Mast-del, posting on Instagram that the “river to the sea” slogan is “an expression of liberation and resistance by Palestinian freedom fighters. To call this slogan ‘hurtful’ is to be against the end of occupation.”
Reiterating that he did not see the slogan when the banner was unfurled on stage, Nyrabia tells THR that “it seems to me we did not at first recognize how sensitive [the slogan] was for both sides. We’ve tried to listen and to learn. We don’t want our festival to be hurting anyone or to be unfair to either side.”
The “river to the sea” slogan has been at the center of debate over the Israel-Hamas war in Europe. Britain’s controversial, and recently fired, home secretary Suella Braverman proposed criminalizing the slogan in certain contexts. Some politicians in Germany and Austria have suggested classifying it as illegal hate speech. The Dutch Supreme Court, however, has upheld the slogan as protected under the country’s freedom of speech laws.
Nyrabia says the IDFA, which runs through Nov.19, continues to operate as usual and that the 10 films withdrawn from the schedule are a small fraction of the nearly 280 titles screening.
“We want our festival to be an open platform for all voices, but the polarization of the world seeped in,” notes Nyrabia. “We have tried and we continue to try to make everyone feel safe and give filmmakers the feeling they can express their opinions openly and freely.”
Depite the controversy and disruption that has rocked this year’s IDFA, Nyrabia says the goal of the world’s largest documentary festival remains the same: To be a place of peaceful dialogue and debate for even the most divisive issues in the world today.
“For a festival to be relevant, for a festival to remain relevant, it has to reflect the world, its problems and its conflicts,” he says. “That’s the price we will pay and we are willing to pay. To show what’s beautiful and what’s ugly. It’s a difficult challenge but it’s one we want to continue to face.”
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