Some prominent Hollywood names are among the filmmakers and industry figures who've signed a pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions—including festivals, broadcasters and production companies—that are "implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people," organizers said Tuesday. The AP reports the pledge specifies that it is targeting institutions and not individuals.
The group Film Workers for Palestine posted an open letter on Monday including signatures from Hollywood luminaries like Emma Stone, Ayo Edebiri, Ava DuVernay, Olivia Colman, Yorgos Lanthimos, Riz Ahmed, Rob Delaney, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton and Cynthia Nixon among many others. The group said it had collected more than 3,000 industry signatures since the pledge was made public. It read in part:
- "As filmmakers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognize the power of cinema to shape perceptions. In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror."
- The pledge also specifies that it is targeting institutions and not individuals: "The call is for film workers to refuse to work with Israeli institutions that are complicit in Israel's human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. This refusal takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity."
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Film Workers for Palestine—a group of film professionals based in various countries formed in early 2024—said their pledge was inspired by Filmmakers United Against Apartheid, who refused to screen their films in apartheid South Africa. The group claims on its website that Israel's major film festivals—including the Jerusalem Film Festival, Haifa International Film Festival and others—"continue to partner with the Israeli government while it carries out what leading experts have defined as genocide against Palestinians in Gaza." But it says that it does not consider all film institutions in Israel complicit, and advises people to ask questions and "seek guidelines set by Palestinian civil society."
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