Thousands March Toward Venice Film Festival in Gaza Protest for ‘Free Palestine’
(Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Invision/AP)
Thousands of protesters marched toward the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday in what is shaping up to be the largest protest ever assembled at a major film event.
Alex Rittman, London Bureau Chief for Variety posted to X, “The Gaza march heading towards the Venice Film Festival is the biggest protest I’ve seen at a film event. There are thousands here.”
Police closed the main roads of the Lido as the march made its way to the main festival area while chanting, “Free Palestine,” Variety reported.
“Despite the serious nature of the message, there was a carnival-like feel, with protestors on stilts waving ‘Peace’ banners, music blasting from speakers, flares and foghorns,” the report reads.
The protest organizer told Variety in a statement, “The Venice Film Festival must not remain an event isolated from reality, but rather become a space to denounce the genocide being carried out by Israel, the complicity of Western governments, and to offer concrete support to the Palestinian people.”
The statement continued:
In Gaza, hospitals, schools and refugee camps are being bombed; civilians are being deprived of food and water; journalists and doctors are being killed; humanitarian ships such as the Freedom Flotilla are being seized. At the same time, in the West Bank, apartheid and settler violence continue unabated. The permanent occupation of Gaza by the Israeli government marks an escalation that has gone beyond every limit of humanity and international law.
Earlier this week, protestors waved Palestinian flags and displayed a “Free Palestine” banner in front of the festival’s headquarters at the Palazzo del Cinema.
The festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera told reporters, “We have been asked to turn down invitations to artists; we will not do that. If they want to be at the festival, they will be here. On the other hand, we have never hesitated to clearly declare our huge sadness and suffering vis-à-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine. The death of civilians and especially of children, who are victims, the collateral damage of a war which nobody has been able to terminate yet.”
