Laura Poitras, Alex Gibney and TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers are among signatories to an open letter urging a Florida mayor to allow a local cinema to stay in business after it screened the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner wants to terminate O Cinema’s lease and withhold city funding after describing the documentary to local residents as “a false, one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents”.
Palestinian-Israeli collective Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor co-directed the film, which chronicles the destruction by Israel of Palestinian hamlets in the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta.
The open letter has been circulated ahead of a vote on the measure by city commissioners on Wednesday. “We as filmmakers invite critical discussion of any film, but your decision to punish O Cinema for screening “No Other Land” is an attack on freedom of expression, the right of artists to tell their stories, and a violation of the First Amendment,” read an excerpt.
Without a US distributor, the filmmakers have relied upon strong reviews and a campaign orchestrated by Cinetic Marketing, who brought on Michael Tuckman Media to book cinemas. Poitras hosted a screening towards the end of 2024, and the documentary has earned more than $1.2m in the US.
Last Friday Art House Convergence and International Documentary Association issued a statement in which they said the mayor’s threat was “gravely concerning”, adding that programming decisions by independent film exhibitors “must not suffer political interference in the form of First Amendment violations”.
O Cinema CEO/CCO Vivian Marthell has asserted she is proceeding with screenings because “every voice deserves to be heard”. Two presentations later this week are sold out.
Deadline was the first to report on the open letter.
No comments yet