At this year’s Venice Film Festival (27 August-6 September 2025), cinema could not stand apart from the world. What is often remembered for red carpets and premieres became instead a stage for protest, solidarity, and tests of conscience. From the powerful ovation for The Voice of Hind Rajab to the sight of Palestinian flags on the Lido, the festival unfolded against the backdrop of Gaza’s ongoing devastation. Artists, audiences and activists turned Venice into something more than a showcase of film. It became a charged arena where art, conscience, and politics came together, both inside the screening halls and out on the streets, revealing how deeply Palestine shaped the spirit of the 82nd round.
Kaouther ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab transformed the cinema hall into a gathering of voices refusing silence. The docudrama, rooted in the final hours of six-year-old Hind Rajab, trapped under fire in Gaza, shook the festival before releasing a wave of grief and solidarity.
On January 29, 2024, the Palestinian Red Crescent received a desperate call. A six-year-old girl was trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, her small voice pleading for rescue. The volunteers stayed on the line, doing everything they could to reach her, but the ambulance never made it in time. Her name was Hind Rajab.
It was this story, too real to be forgotten, that Ben Hania carried to Venice. The Voice of Hind Rajab was less a screening than an act of collective remembrance. When the lights rose, the Sala Grande erupted into 23 minutes of applause, punctuated by chants of “Free Palestine.” It was as though Hind’s voice, once trapped in the static of an emergency call, had finally reached an audience large enough to carry it beyond borders.
When the film was awarded the Silver Lion for Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s second highest honour, Ben Hania used her moment not to celebrate herself but to redirect the light. She dedicated the prize to the Palestinian Red Crescent, “the real heroes” risking their lives in Gaza, and turned a festival stage into a platform for witnesses. “The voice of Hind is the voice of Gaza itself,” she declared. “A cry for rescue the entire world could hear, yet no one answered.” Her words, joined by a message from Hind’s mother read aloud that night, moved the narrative from grief to urgency. Cinema cannot undo the violence, she insisted, but it can preserve a child’s voice long enough to demand accountability. In Venice, that voice echoed, transforming film into a vessel of justice and a fragile but undeniable form of resistance.
The film’s strength lies not only in its story but also in the remarkable support it received. Palestinian actors Clara Khoury, Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, and Amer Hlehel brought to life the Red Crescent crew who tried to save Hind. Behind the camera, some of Hollywood’s most influential figures – Brad Pitt, Jonathan Glazer, Alfonso Cuarón, Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara – stood as executive producers. Phoenix and Mara even walked the red carpet holding a photograph of Hind Rajab, a gesture that underlined the film’s symbolic weight.
That remarkable show of support, however, does not erase the anxieties surrounding the film’s future. Ongoing concerns focus on its chances of reaching audiences in the United States, where works critical of Israel often encounter steep barriers to distribution. No Other Land, a documentary on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank that won an Academy Award earlier this year, remains without a major American distributor. In this context, the uncertainty around The Voice of Hind Rajab feels especially urgent. Yet Ben Hania remains hopeful. “I hope it will be seen in the US. The most important thing is that the voice of Hind Rajab reaches everybody all over the world, and the Oscars and Venice here are a great doorway,” she told Reuters.
This was not the first time Ben Hania transformed narratives rooted in the Arab world into stories that speak across borders about freedom, violence, and the fragile line between survival and dignity. In The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020), she crafted a tale about borders and the commodification of human suffering. The story of a young Syrian who allows a celebrated artist to tattoo a Schengen visa onto his back so that he might escape to Europe exposed the brutal paradox of freedom in a world where mobility is a privilege bought and sold. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, it earned Yahya Mahayni the Best Actor Award in the Orizzonti section and went on to make history as Tunisia’s first nomination for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Three years later, Ben Hania turned her gaze inward with Four Daughters (2023), a hybrid documentary that blurred the line between testimony and re-enactment. The film followed Olfa, a Tunisian mother, and her four daughters, two of whom were lost to radicalisation, while the other two struggled to live under the weight of that absence. What began as a domestic portrait unfolded into a meditation on motherhood, loss, and the ways extremist ideologies break families apart. Premiering in the main competition at Cannes, it won the festival’s prestigious L’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye Award) for Best Documentary and was later selected as Tunisia’s Oscar submission.
The choice of The Voice of Hind Rajab for Venice’s main competition was no coincidence. Many observers see it as part of a shift in the festival’s role from focusing on red carpet glamour to engaging directly with politics and urgent global issues. The Guardian pointed out that this year’s round featured several films that turned away from spectacle and towards moral reckoning: Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite on the nuclear threat, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia as a climate allegory, and Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice on economic insecurity. In that context, Ben Hania’s film stood as a powerful example of the new direction. As the paper put it, “Humanity is facing a reckoning,” and Venice has become a place where cinema carries the weight of that truth.
This shift was not only visible in the films selected for the official programme. Events on the margins of the festival imposed a political charge that could not be ignored. During the 82nd round, the voice of protest became part of the atmosphere itself. And just as The Voice of Hind Rajab embodied solidarity and compassion for Palestinians, the louder refrain outside the screening halls was one of defiance, condemning the ethnic cleansing Palestine continues to suffer.
The protests reached a scale rarely witnessed at a major film festival. Organised by Venice4Palestine – a loose coalition of filmmakers, artists, and cultural workers determined to make Palestine visible on one of cinema’s most prestigious stages – thousands marched along the Lido carrying Palestinian flags and chanting “Free Palestine,” “Stop the genocide,” and “End Western complicity.” Observers described it as one of the largest demonstrations ever to break into the orbit of Venice, transforming the festival’s glamorous promenade into resistance street.
The march was not limited to slogans. Protesters circulated an open letter urging the festival to condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and to reconsider its welcome to guests such as Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler, actors seen as vocal supporters of Israeli policies. Gadot later confirmed she would not attend. Activists also pressed the festival to raise the Palestinian flag above the Palazzo del Cinema and to recognise the Global Sumud Flotilla at the closing ceremony. Though these demands were not officially adopted, they set the tone: Venice had become a place where the cinematic spectacle could not be separated from the urgency of politics.
The march itself unfolded less like a conventional protest than a carnival of defiance. Demonstrators carried flags and banners but also filled the Lido with music, smoke flares and torches, turning the promenade into a scene that was at once theatrical and political. Venice4Palestine declared that “the Venice Film Festival should not remain an event isolated from reality; it must expose Israel’s genocide, reveal Western governments’ complicity, and provide tangible support to the Palestinian people.” The result was an atmosphere where resistance adopted its own cinematic language – part rally, part performance – impossible to ignore.
Beyond the marches, signs of solidarity entered the festival’s own spaces. In the Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) and Isola Edipo (Oedipus Island) programmes, the sail of the iconic boat Oedipus Rex was draped in the colours of the Palestinian flag and inscribed with the words “From Venice to Gaza.” It was not just decoration but a striking image, linking the waters of the lagoon with a strip of land under siege, reminding everyone that cinema cannot seal itself off from the world it inhabits.
That same section hosted Nicolas Wadimoff’s documentary Who Is Still Alive, a work built from the testimonies of nine Palestinians who have lived through displacement, exile, and the ongoing trauma of survival. Their stories were powerful, but their absence in Venice was even louder: five of the women featured in the film were denied visas to attend, leaving empty seats as silent witnesses to the barriers Palestinians continue to face.
Another moving moment came with a tribute led by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi to Fatma Hassona, the Palestinian photographer killed alongside her family in Gaza. She had filmed until her last moments, transforming her camera into an instrument of resistance. Her death was invoked in Venice as proof that cinema is not only an art form but also a fragile, dangerous weapon against violence and erasure.
Venice4Palestine also carried its activism into the festival’s conversations. Panels brought together director Eyal Sivan and members of BDS Italy to argue for cultural boycott as a way to resist normalisation, insisting that neutrality in such times is only another form of complicity. Towards the end of the festival, the group renewed its symbolic demands: to see the Palestinian flag raised above the Palazzo del Cinema, for the Global Sumud Flotilla to be acknowledged during the closing ceremony, and for artists to walk on stage carrying visible signs of solidarity. These appeals were not formally adopted, but their presence showed how deeply the spirit of protest had entered Venice. Gaza was no longer a distant conflict spoken of in whispers; it was inscribed into the very fabric of the event itself.
Among the most striking gestures of solidarity was a public reading performed by Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux and acclaimed filmmaker Céline Sciamma. Standing before the Oedipus Rex boat at Isola Edipo, they gave voice to a manifesto titled “From Venice to Gaza.” Their words cut through the festival’s usual glamour, calling for an end to the violence in Gaza and urging artists not to remain silent in the face of genocide. The presence of two of Europe’s most celebrated cultural figures transformed the moment into something more than protest – it became a reminder that cinema and literature carry moral weight, and that festivals are not immune to history.
Even as the festival halls echoed with calls for justice, its leadership tried to toe a careful line between sympathy and neutrality. Artistic director Alberto Barbera acknowledged the marches and banners, making clear that Venice would tolerate protests so long as screenings were not disrupted. He spoke of the festival’s “deep sorrow” for the killing of civilians in Gaza, especially children, while stressing that the institution does not issue political decrees.
In contrast, jury President Alexander Payne chose to step back from the moment’s urgency. “Can film change the world? Probably not,” he said, adding that cinema remains an essential record of its time but declining to weigh in on Gaza directly. “I am here to talk about cinema only.” The two voices revealed the tension at the heart of Venice: a festival pulled between the insistence of politics outside and the discipline of artistic neutrality within.
The closing night carried its own quiet act of defiance. When Jim Jarmusch stepped on stage to receive the Golden Lion for Father Mother Sister Brother, he wore a small badge pinned to his chest that read simply: “Enough.” It was a word heavy with meaning, pointing directly at the war on Gaza without speeches or slogans.
In a festival already charged with political urgency, the gesture stood out for its restraint: an artist using the simplest language possible to say that the violence must stop. With the world’s cameras trained on him, Jarmusch turned his award into a platform, reminding Venice that cinema is never only about art; it is also about conscience. His silent protest echoed the words of Kaouther ben Hania earlier in the festival, when she insisted that Hind’s voice was also Gaza’s, and that cinema must carry it across borders until justice is done.
In Venice, Palestine was not a side note. It was the story that no one could ignore.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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