Julián Schvindlerman from Comunidades Plus of Israel, for FinGurú
It's not unusual for political tensions of the moment to infiltrate film festivals, and two recent festivals prove this: does Gaza and Israel not have a global calling? By contrasting two current premieres, we notice, on one hand, the warm reception in Venice of the Tunisian film The Voice of Hind Rajab, about a Palestinian girl killed in the war in Gaza, and on the other, the censorship exercised in Toronto against the Canadian documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, centered on a rescue on October 7 in Israel. The contrast is not anecdotal. It reflects the growing hostility towards Israel that is extending, now without shame, to the field of visual arts.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) decided to exclude the only "pro-Israel" documentary in competition, claiming issues with rights for the images used, as they would belong to Hamas, whose members filmed the massacre on October 7, 2023. Although the Festival authorities backtracked after being left in true moral ridicule (if they had requested permission from Goebbels to show images of Auschwitz, they were questioned), the incident highlighted the current climate. It was a cultural veto and an ideological condemnation hidden behind an astonishing legal technicality.
Some time later, in Venice, the screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab was celebrated with enthusiasm. The film was applauded for 23 minutes and won the second jury prize. No one discussed copyright, no one raised objections. Let’s be clear: it is legitimate for “pro-Palestinian” cinema to be recognized. What is disturbing is not its success, but the contrast: the unlimited empathy towards the Palestinian narrative versus the exclusion of the Israeli experience, even when referring to victims of a massacre perpetrated by jihadists.
When comparing Toronto with Venice, the double standard is evident: victims in Gaza receive the spotlight while the victims of October 7 remain in darkness. Images and testimonies of Palestinian suffering circulate freely. But when a director tries to show the pain of Israel, he is denied his right to tell the trauma of October and is expelled from the room. What would be celebrated in other contexts as memory or denunciation cinema, in the Israeli case becomes a taboo. The motivation is visceral. For years, a significant part of progressivism has unreservedly adopted the discourse that identifies Israel with colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. These defamations have become dogmas in certain circles. The film industry, always sensitive to progressive opinion currents, is embracing this narrative, promoting what it loves and suppressing what bothers it. The Palestinian tragedy attracts, Israeli suffering annoys.
This transforms cinema into an extension of political warfare. Days ago, one thousand eight hundred actors, directors, and film producers announced a complete boycott of Israeli filmography. When international festivals discriminate based on ideology or political correctness, they cease to be open forums for plural expression and become battlegrounds. The space where plurality should prevail is reduced to an echo chamber of the Palestinian version. Curiously, a cinema that is diverse, questioning, and even fiercely critical of its own country, like Israeli cinema, is put in the crosshairs. Far from being monolithic, it is a filmography that explores ethical dilemmas and sociopolitical events with rawness. Eliminating that voice from the international circuit impoverishes art and skews history.
The paradox is that, in the name of justice, an injustice is perpetuated. The pain of Israeli victims - murdered, mutilated, raped, burned, or kidnapped on October 7 - is rendered invisible. They are denied not only human solidarity but also the right to be expressed in art. In contrast, the representation of Palestinian suffering is awarded and applauded. An artistic competition is thus absurdly blurred into one of victimization. The result is predictable: one festival embraces one narrative while another festival cancels the opposite.
Film has never been immune to political polarization, but the current asymmetry is very marked. The reputation of a festival, the career of a director, and the success of a film no longer matter; rather, it is the credibility of the cultural sphere that is at stake. Celebrating one side while silencing the other is losing all balance, it is trading artistic merit for political taste, it is an act of stylized propaganda. And festivals that yield to that logic become complicit in a bias that mixes applause with baseness.
The original act of prior censorship camouflaged as political sensitivity in Toronto failed; The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue was screened and received a standing ovation for five minutes, although before a mostly Jewish audience. Its projection illustrates that empathy towards Palestinian victims does not have to imply denying the humanity of Israeli victims. Nevertheless, today the “pro-Israel” voice - or “Israeli” for short, perhaps - in film is being silenced, and this is because it angers a cultural elite that has already decided who deserves all compassion and who deserves none.
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P.S. After this column was submitted, TIFF awarded The People’s Choice Award to the film The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue.
Julian Schvindlerman is a writer and international political analyst specializing in Middle Eastern affairs.
He is a professor in the International Relations Program at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Palermo (Buenos Aires) and a visiting professor at the Hebrew University (Mexico).
He is the author of Escape to Utopia: Mao's Red Book and Gaddafi's Green Book (p. 271); The Hidden Letter: A History of an Arab-Jewish Family (p. 300); Rome and Jerusalem: Vatican policy toward the Jewish state (p. 527); Land for Peace, Land for War (p. 487); and Triangle of Infamy: Richard Wagner, the Nazis, and Israel (p. 128).
He has a blog in The Times of Israel and is a columnist for Radio Universidad de Córdoba, a regular contributor to Perfil and Infobae (Argentina), and Libertad Digital (Spain). His articles have appeared in The Washington Times (United States), Clarín (Argentina), El País (Uruguay), La Prensa (Panama), Page Siete (Bolivia), and La Razón (Spain), among others. He has been interviewed by France24 in Spanish, CNN en español, RT en español (Russia), TV7 Helsinki (Finland), I24 News in Spanish (Israel), Televisión Pública Argentina, and NTN24 (Colombia), among others.
He has lectured at universities and institutions in Argentina, Aruba, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
He was a columnist for the Miami Herald, Associate Executive Director of United Nations Watch (Switzerland), advisor to the DAIA (political representation of the Jewish community in Argentina), and professor at the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary (Argentina), as well as an instructor at the Young Leaders Institute abroad (Israel). He also commented on various radio shows in Argentina. He is also the editor of the magazine "Coloquio" of the Latin American Jewish Congress.
He holds a degree in Business Administration from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Buenos Aires and a Master's in Social Sciences from the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He is a member of the Republican Professors Association.
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