International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) published its third statement in as many days on Sunday night, following a statement from the Palestine Film Institute (PFI) urging IDFA to acknowledge that its own earlier statement “unjustly criminalises Palestinian voices and narratives”.
The PFI announced its withdrawal from all organised activities at the market.
In its new message, the festival repeated its call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
“Many filmmakers, Palestinians, Israelis, and others, whose work featured at IDFA over the years, showed the world how occupation is the core of this tragedy, and that ending the occupation and respecting all human lives as equal and sacred, are the essential steps,” the statement read.
It also addressed the furious debate around the contentious slogan, “from the river to the sea”, that was used in a banner unfurled during an onstage protest on opening night.
The festival acknowledged the slogan is “used by various parties in different ways and is perceived by various people in various manners.” It added: “We are not ignoring, undermining nor criminalising any of these positions and we fully respect and acknowledge the pain that is going around.”
Producer Mohanad Yaqubi, public programme curator for the PFI, clarified the organisation’s position.
“We have been participating in this market for seven years. We have filmmakers from Palestine, we have filmmakers fly from around Europe. They are all coming to present [at IDFA] and suddenly when they arrived on Friday, we have this statement that you are not allowed to say, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ and criminalising us in the sense that we felt this was institutional censorship from an institution that we collaborated with for a long time. We can’t accept that, especially at this time because it puts vulnerable people at danger.”
Some Palestinian films have now been taken out of the festival. However, Yaqubi clarified the PFI is not urging a blanket Palestinian boycott of IDFA but is encouraging filmmakers to use the festival “as a way to speak up and use their platforms to talk about the continuous atrocities in Gaza.”
“Some are doing silent withdrawals, some are reading statements,” Yaqubi explained.
There are expected to be lectures, conversations and sit-ins throughout the rest of IDFA to draw attention to Gaza.
A spokesperson for the organisation Workers for Palestine added: “We do not call for the boycott specifically because we are trying to defend the place of the Palestinian films that are within the festival and their films are already being silenced, their voices are already being silenced.”
Yaqubi acknowledged IDFA’s statement on Sunday night. “We think it is a position that a festival like IDFA should take,” he said. “It’s what we expect from a festival that respects its people. We are the flesh of the festival.”
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