Pro-Palestine organizers are planning multiple protests at the Venice Film Festival from August 27 to September 6, calling on the festival to denounce “the genocide in Palestine perpetrated by Israel,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Over a dozen protesters arrived at the red carpet around 10 a.m. on August 27 ahead of the festival’s opening ceremonies, chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “Stop, stop genocide” while waving Palestinian flags. The demonstration comes in advance of an August 30 march down Santa Maria Elisabetta avenue, which will feature “hundreds of people,” according to a spokesperson for the march, Marina Vergnano. Vergnano said the goal of the march is to “shine the spotlight of the film festival in the right direction,” per Deadline. She also said the march received “hundreds of signatures from political groups, associations and groups from the Veneto region, but also well beyond,” demanding the festival take a public stance.
“At a time when the eyes of the world will be on Venice and the Film Festival, we have a duty to make the voices of all those who are outraged and rebelling heard: let us therefore turn the spotlight of the Festival on Palestine,” the Italian political groups participating in the march said in an August 25 statement announcing the protest, obtained by Deadline. “The denial of humanitarian aid, water and food is a strategy of genocide, carried out with the complicity of the U.S. and European governments, including the Italian one, which continues to support Israel economically, politically and diplomatically, continuing to supply weapons and maintaining trade agreements,” it reads.
The statement also called for Israeli actress Gal Gadot and IDF supporter and actor Gerard Butler to be disinvited from the festival. “We have been asked to turn down invitations to artists; we will not do that,” Venice chief Alberto Barbera said at Wednesday’s press conference, according to Variety. “If they want to be at the festival, they will be here. On the other hand, we have never hesitated to clearly declare our huge sadness and suffering vis-à-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.” A representative for Gadot told Deadline that Gadot “was never able nor was ever confirmed to attend the Venice Film Festival.”
Separately from the march, hundreds of members of the film community had previously signed a different open letter calling on the festival to make a “clear and unambiguous stand” on August 23. “We all have a duty to amplify the stories and voices of those who are being massacred, even with the complicit indifference of the West,” the letter states. Signatories included Arab and Tarzan Nasser, who won best director in Cannes Un Certain Regard 2025 for their film Once Upon a Time in Gaza; director Ken Loach; and the Italian actor Toni Servillo, who is starring in the 2025 Venice opener, Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia.
“The Biennale and the festival have always been, throughout their history, places of open discussion and sensitivity to all the most pressing issues facing society and the world,” the festival responded on August 23, citing the premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film from Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania about the killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl. The festival ended the statement with “The Biennale is, as always, open to dialogue.”
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The first of multiple planned protests was held on August 27.
