The Venice Film Festival has announced two new initiatives in collaboration with The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk to support and raise awareness about directors, filmmakers, and artists who have been arrested or imprisoned around the world during the past year.
Held on September 3 at the Palazzo del Casino press conference room, the first initiative is a panel titled: Filmmakers Under Attack: Taking Stock, Taking Action, which will feature guests including Venice head Alberto Barbera, Vanja Kalurdjercic (Director of the Rotterdam International Film Festival), producer Nadir Öperli, Orwa Nyrabia (Director of the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival), Mike Downey (Chairman of the European Film Academy) and an unnamed Iranian filmmaker.
The panel will aim to “provide information on the situation of filmmakers who are currently being persecuted, arrested or incarcerated around the world” and highlight the need for “the world of cinema to mobilize and discuss possible actions that the international community could concretely undertake to help,” the festival said in a statement.
Over the course of the afternoon, the panelists will discuss the ICFR’s fund for Ukrainian directors, the many cases of persecuted filmmakers that ICFR is working on in the rest of the world, and the situation in Turkey, with reference to the case of the producer Cidgem Mater and her colleagues, condemned along with her. The panelists will also touch on the situation in Iran, with reference to the recent cases of the filmmakers Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof, and Mostafa Al-Ahmad.
In addition to the panel, the festival will hold a flash mob on the Palazzo Del Cinema Red Carpet on Sept. 9 at 4:30pm, prior to the screening of Jafar Pahani’s film No Bears, which will screen in competition. Festivalgoers are invited to join the demonstration that has been organized to “focus attention on the situation of the filmmakers arrested or imprisoned around the world, and in particular the director Jafar Panahi and the other persecuted Iranian directors.”
In a statement, the festival said: “Panahi, who has already been arrested and condemned in the past, will naturally be unable to attend the Venice Film Festival because he was again deprived of his personal freedom last July for having protested together with many of his colleagues against the arrest of two other directors, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, which occurred following the protests against the violence against civilians in Iran.”
