Over 4,000 actors, filmmakers sign pledge to boycott Israeli film industry over Gaza

More than 4,000 film industry figures, including some major Hollywood actors, have now signed an open letter calling for a boycott of the Israeli film industry, as support for the pledge has nearly tripled since it was first published Monday.

“We pledge not to screen films, appear at, or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions — including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters, and production companies — that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” read the letter.

Joining the signatories who joined the boycott pledge earlier in the week were several additional high-profile actors and filmmakers, including Joaquin Phoenix, Emma D’Arcy, Rooney Mara, Eric Andre, Elliot Page and Guy Pearce.

The letter’s 1,300 original backers included movie and TV stars Josh O’Connor, Lena Headley, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Tobias Menzies, Brian Cox, Olivia Colman, Ilana Glazer, Ayo Edebiri and Mark Ruffalo.

Hundreds more quickly joined, including Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield and Jonathan Glazer.

The pledge is distinct from other previous arts and culture Israel boycotts in naming specific Israeli cultural institutions that the letter’s signatories are boycotting. Those include major Israeli film festivals like the Jerusalem Film Festival, Haifa International Film Festival, Docaviv and TLVfest.

“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 letter read.

“We answer the call of Palestinian filmmakers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanization, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression,” the film workers said in their petition.

“The vast majority of Israeli film production and distribution companies, sales agents, cinemas and other film institutions have never endorsed the full, internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people,” according to a FAQ document accompanying the letter.

The pledge does not specifically target Israeli individuals. Instead, the document says the “refusal takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity,” and that “a few Israeli film entities are not complicit.”

Several open letters signed by prominent figures from the worlds of cinema, music and literature have been published as pressure mounts on the Israeli government to end the nearly two-year war against Hamas in Gaza sparked by the terror group’s invasion and massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, and urgently address the humanitarian crisis there.

An Italian filmmakers’ collective, Venice4Palestine, urged the city’s film festival in August to take a stand, with a letter gathering 2,000 signatures, including from Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro.

Last month, some 200 British and Irish writers called for an “immediate and complete” boycott of Israel, “until the people of Gaza are adequately provided with drinking water, food, and medical supplies, and until all other forms of relief and necessity are restored to the people of Gaza under the aegis of the United Nations.”

The writers also said: “We demand the return of all hostages and those imprisoned without charge or trial on all sides. We demand an end to settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank. We demand the immediate and permanent ceasefire and cessation of violence by Hamas and Israel.”

Israel denies carrying out genocide in the Strip, saying it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities during the war and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.