Venice Film Festival: Normally apolitical event struggles to shake the spectre of Gaza

Protests against the genocide dominate a festival that had the strongest Middle Eastern selection in years

Italian actress Anna Foglietta waves a Palestinian flag from a boat during the 82nd Venice International Film Festival at Venice Lido, 4 September (AFP/Tiziana Fabi)

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Of the top film festivals in Europe and the US, Venice is arguably the most apolitical. Over the past 15 years, La Mostra has been transformed into a launchpad for the awards season, with current artistic director, Alberto Barbera, making a habit of securing scores of Hollywood stars for his selections.

The 2025 edition, between 27 August and 6 September was no different. Venice boasted films fronted by Julia Roberts, Dwayne Johnson and George Clooney to name a few.

This year, however, Gaza stole the headlines, as Venice inadvertently turned political in a fashion not seen before in other major film fairs.

The Voice of Hind Rajab, about the Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers attracted a 24 minute ovation and left some members of the audience in tears.

Meanwhile, an activist group named Venice4Palestine (V4P) became a fixture of Venezia 82.

In an open letter signed by more than 1,500 artists and film industrials, the group urged artists and creatives at the festival “to create a constant backdrop of conversations” to “uphold the truth about ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, colonialism and all the other crimes against humanity committed by Israel for decades".

From day one, Gaza dominated discourse of the festival. At the press conference, festival director Antonio Barbera was asked about the group’s call to withdraw invitations for Israeli actress Gal Gadot and Scottish actor Gerard Butler over their support for the Israeli army.

“We will not do that,” he said. “If they want to be at the festival, they will be here.”

A moment later, nonetheless, he stressed that: “we have never hesitated to clearly declare our huge sadness and suffering vis-a-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine.

“The death of civilians and especially of children, who are victims, the collateral damage of a war which nobody has been able to terminate yet. I think there are no doubts in regard to the biennale’s position on this.”

Oscar-winning American director and jury president Alexandre Payne was asked about his position on Gaza.

His confession that he was “a little bit unprepared” for the question drew the ire of social media throughout the opening phase of this year’s edition.

He added, however, that his political views “are in agreement with many of yours”.

A film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by the Israeli military received a 23-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday.

The Voice of Hind Rajab left much of the audience and cast tears after the screening.

It tells the story of Rajab… pic.twitter.com/k52yjEksUc
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 3, 2025

Gaia Ferur, director of the Venice Days sidebar, and Beatrice Fiorentino, head of the Venice Critics’ Week, explicitly expressed their backing for V4P.

In the opening ceremony of Venice Days, Ferur said: “Cinema is never neutral. By its very nature, it chooses what stories to tell, what to show, and how to show it. It always takes a stand. And so must we.

“My position, and that of the Giornate degli Autori, is one of unconditional support for the Palestinian people, and also of solidarity with Israelis and Jewish communities across the world who are protesting the heinous crimes committed by the Israeli government.”

Creative warfare

On Saturday, 30 August, V4P staged what Variety dubbed as “possibly the largest protest ever seen at a major film event over Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza.”

Thousands of people from diverse backgrounds flooded roads surrounding the festival headquarters on Lido Island as chants of “free, free Palestine” echoed loudly.

Journalists and critics bombarded disparate directors with enquiries related to Gaza.

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Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska, whose film Mother about Mother Theresa opened the Horizons sidebar, said: “I can tell you what Mother Teresa would do. She would be there helping. She would be there under fire taking care of things.”

Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes, a notable critic of Jonathan Glazer’s infamous 2024 Oscar speech, gave a vague answer when asked about Gaza and V4P.

“The big question for me - in film, in art, but also in everyday life - are you a humanist or an anti-humanist?,” he said.

“There are two forces in the heart of civilisation, and sometimes there is this duality that cannot be easily solved.”

Iconic American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, meanwhile, was quizzed about his position on indie streaming giant Mubi - co-producer and distributor of his latest feature Father Mother Sister Brother – and their recent controversial partnership with investment firm Sequoia which has close ties with the Israeli military.

“I was of course disappointed and quite disconcerted by this relationship,” he said.

'I consider pretty much all corporate money is dirty money'

- Jim Jarmusch, filmmaker

“But having said that, on a personal level, I am an independent filmmaker and I have taken money from various sources to be able to realise my films.

“And I consider pretty much all corporate money is dirty money. And if you start analysing each of these film companies and their financing structures you are going to find a lot of nasty dirt. So it is all there.”

Cast member Indya Moore gave a more pronounced response.

“Since the genocide of Palestinians began, there has been an incredible amount of creative warfare and resource warfare behind the scenes,” she said.

“People are trying to figure out how do we work in a capacity that is ethical and is not enabling a systematic pipeline that funds these kinds of things to happen to people. The kind of due diligence that people are learning how to do is a developing process.”

Hijra

With Gaza as an ever present backdrop, Venice boasted its strongest - and largest - lineup of Middle Eastern films in recent memory, encompassing more than 10 films that included feature narratives, documentaries, and shorts.

Chief amongst this year’s selection was Hijra, the sophomore effort by Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen.

Set in 2001, this road movie starts with grandmother Sitti’s (Khairiah Nathmy) rugged road journey to Mecca for Hajj with her two granddaughters', 12-year-old Janna (Lamar Faden) and rebellious teenager Sarah (Raghad Bokhari).

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Sarah mysteriously disappears, propelling her grandmother and sister to embark on an expedition to find her spanning from the south of the country to its northern borders.

Aided by taxi driver Ahmed (Nawaf Al-Dhufairy), the grandmother and granddaughter are forced to reconcile their differences as they race against the clock to locate the girl’s whereabouts before her strict and relentless father finds out about her defiant disappearance.

Ameen’s debut feature, Scales (2019), was a visually striking mermaid fable let down by a thin narrative and elementary feminism.

Hijra sidesteps the distancing mannerisms of Scales, opting instead for a matter-of-fact visual structure that emphasises the plainness of a craggy environment lightyears away from the enforced sweeping modernisation that would engulf Saudi Arabia with the reign on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Muslim holy city of Mecca presented by Ameen offers little to no spirituality; the suffocating commotion of pushy pilgrims, the austerity of the voyage to the Kaaba, the endless stores sprouting from every corner and charlatan merchants who sell fake Zamzam water to naive worshippers are an outright sign of the commodification of religion.

Hijra film still — 'Hijra' criticises the commodification of religion in the Muslim holy city of Mecca (Biet Ameen Production)

Ameen shows the seeds of the far-reaching commercialisation that would change the face of Mecca a few decades later.

Ahmed, whose ethnic origins are kept under wraps, stands out as an emblem of Saudi Arabia’s racist kafala system.

A Saudi-born man who never stepped a foot outside his home country, he may never become a naturalised citizen with full rights.

The predicated theme of oppressive patriarchy is front and centre in the story, but Hijra is a lot more than a staunch condemnation of the nation’s male rule.

Part affecting tale of female bonding, part preceptive reflection on evolving intergenerational relationships between women, and part an incisive dissection of class and race in the kingdom, Ameen’s brilliant picture is one of the most daring Saudi films ever made.

The film is a major step forward for a budding cinema scene that may have already succeeded in carving out a clear path for itself away from censorship.

A Sad and Beautiful World

Less political but equally affecting was A Sad and Beautiful World, the fiction narrative debut from Lebanese director Cyril Aris who made a name for himself with two highly intimate documentaries: The Swing (2018) and Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (2023).

A love story that begins in the Lebanese civil war and concludes in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2023, the film starts as a meet-cute romance between young idealistic chef Nino (Hasan Akil) and pragmatic business developer Yasmina (an outstanding Mounia Akl).

Nino wants to stay in Lebanon and develop his family business; Yasmina wants to leave for Germany and build a more stable life away from her volatile home country.

At every interval, and just when you think that fate will finally break their bond, the pair manages to pull through, fight back, and persevere against the odds.

A sad and beautiful world — Hasan Akil and Mounia Akl star as two star-crossed lovers whose relationship strains because of instability in Lebanon (Abbout Productions)

The first part is saddled with cliches and queasy corniness – the sight of the two lovers running together after a party is the stuff of Turkish soap operas.

It’s in the second half when the film finds it footing, as the sobering reality of a tattered nation always in flux dawns on the two.

Taking a leaf out of Borhane Alaouie’s Beirut the Encounter (1981), Lebanon stands as a constant barrier between Nino and Yasmina: a country where normalcy and stability are impossible to sustain.

Aris sensitively captures the broken spirit of life following the 2020 Beirut port explosion: the debilitating political and economic stagnation, the agony of witnessing your friends leaving the country one by one; and the near-impossibility of raising a family in a healthy and safe environment.

The sincerity of the film’s narration compels the audience to root for Nino and Yasmina as Lebanon constantly pushes them out and away from each other.

Love is hard work: a series of difficult compromises, Aris suggests, and living in the permanent purgatory that is Lebanon certainly compounds these compromises.

Aris’s unwholesome knack for over-sentimentality frequently threatens the emotional credibility of his story, but A Sad and Beautiful World ultimately transcends these shortcomings and hiccups to emerge as the most moving love story in Arab cinema in many years.

My Father and Qaddafi

Less successful was Jihan K’s debut feature My Father and Qaddafi, a documentary that chronicles the life and times of the director’s father Mansour El-Kikhia, Libya’s ex-minister of foreign affairs turned opposition leader against the Gaddafi regime.

In December 1993, when the director was a mere six-year-old, Kikhia travelled to Cairo to participate in an Arab Organization for Human Rights Board of Trustees meeting.

He disappeared shortly afterwards, and for two decades, both the Mubarak government and Gaddafi denied responsibility for his forced disappearance.

Placing herself at the fore of the story, My Father and Qaddafi is part portrait of a family yearning for closure over the unknown fate of the missing father, part snapshot of Libya’s turbulent politics of the past half-a-century, and part a monster film about a man who was once a revolutionary figure in the African decolonial movement.

Mansour El-Kikhia, a former foreign minister of Libya, was disappeared during a visit to Cairo (Jihan K)

My Father and Qaddafi is undeniably noteworthy as a document of Libya’s little-known opposition movement, offering some insightful testimonials that reveal the group’s underestimation of Gaddafi in the early years of the republic.

“We thought he was a joke,” an ex-colleague of El-Kikhia says. “He had no discipline.”

Cinematically, however, K’s film is thoroughly lacking. For starters, the director proves to be an inadequate interviewer, while her decision to conduct the interviews in English with her Arab-speaking subjects is baffling and distracting.

The director’s own voice-over, also in English, is amateurishly written and recited - overly flowerily, inconcise, and downright creaky.

Her account of the geopolitics of the region is reductive and often comes off as notes from a power-point presentation. Her descriptions of 1950s Egyptian society and Arab nationalism, for example, resembles a Wikipedia entry.

Equally problematic is K’s placement of herself in the film. The director peppers her picture with home-videos of herself as a six-year-old that add nothing to the narrative, and it’s this self-misplacement that dilutes the plotline of the family grief and coming to terms with the definite loss of the Mansour.

Eight years in the making, My Father and Qaddafi is a prime example of what happens to a project when it passes endless labs operated by consultants each of whom has a distinctive and rigid vision of what makes a good movie.

The story of Mansour El-Kikhia and Libya deserves a gripping, thorough treatment; his daughter’s exceedingly manufactured document, alas, is not it.

More ingenious was Past Future Continuous, Morteza Ahmadvand and Firouzeh Khosrovani’s conceptual documentary that sees the, later exiled, Iranian filmmaker installing cameras at the Tehran house of her elderly parents.

Images of quotidian activities constitute this meditative piece on exile, memory, the soothing if fleeting power of the image, and the excruciating passage of time. Part of the narration is faulted for suggesting that the Middle East is in perpetual state of war, but this is a minor footnote in a highly tender picture laced with the anxiety of separation, of the affliction of uprootedness, of the fear of helplessly watching one’s parents fade away from afar.

Beautiful, piercing, and haunting, the plotless narrative of Past Future Continuous may struggle to garner the widespread attention that greeted Khosrovani’s previous outing Radiograph of a Family (2020), but it remains another confident step forward for one of Iran’s most important voices in non-fiction filmmaking.

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