Director Amos Gitai pushes back against boycott call of ‘Why War’ film at Venice fest
Over 300 artists sign letter asserting that Israeli production complicit in ‘apartheid, occupation and now genocide,’ but screening goes ahead
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Israeli director Amos Gitai, known for his critical views on Israel, resisted efforts to boycott his latest film, “Why War,” at the Venice Film Festival last weekend.
Gitai’s latest film was due to premiere at the festival on Saturday night. The film, along with Dani Rosenberg’s “Of Dogs and Men,” was the subject of a letter signed by more than 300 artists, including Nazareth-born filmmaker Hany Abu Assad, Italian-American filmmaker Enrico Parenti and Italian artist and filmmaker Alessandra Ferrini.
The letter asserted that Gitai’s film had been created by “complicit Israeli production companies that contribute to apartheid, occupation and now genocide through their silence or active participation in artwashing.”
In a heated press conference before the August 31 evening screening of his film, Gitai argued that those calling for the boycott hadn’t seen his movie, and it had not received any Israeli state funding.
Gitai said that despite the ongoing devastation in Gaza, he was optimistic that the Israel-Palestinian conflict would be resolved one day.
“Sometimes the worst low point will give a place to reconciliation because these people will understand this is not the way to go on,” said Gitai. “They cannot go on killing one another and proclaiming this as a victory. These are empty propositions.”
During the press conference, Gitai spoke about the 90-minute “Why War,” which follows the correspondence in the early 1930s between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud as they attempted to answer questions relating to the human race’s aggressive nature and how to avoid war.
“The idea of the film is not focused on Israel and Palestine, which isn’t the only conflict on the planet,” said Gitai, who began working on the movie in January 2024, after the devastating October 7 Hamas terrorist attack that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
“After October 7, I was very sad,” he said. “Very sad because this country that I love and this region that I love, we are kidnapped collectively by a group of people that want to prolong war.”
Gitai also commented that Europeans like to look at Israel and the Palestinians “like some sort of savage people,” pointing out that tens of millions of people in Europe were killed in the continent’s past wars.
“We have to move forward, this is a very sad and bad situation,” said Gitai.
The filmmaker has long addressed his country’s controversial issues in his movies, which include the 1999 “Kadosh” about the ultra-Orthodox community, “Kippur” (2000), a telling of the 1973 Yom Kippur War from his own experiences and “Rabin, The Last Day” (2015), grappling with the 1995 assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The cast of “Why War” includes Irène Jacob, Mathieu Amalric, Bahira Ablassi, Keren Mor, Yael Abecassis, Pini Mittelman, Menache Noy, Minas Qarawany and Micha Lescot.
The annual Venice Film Festival opened August 28 and will close on September 7.
