Murals on the streets, protesters in front of their homes, calls on social media. Pro-Israel militants have begun a persecution campaign against the directors of the documentary No Other Land, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, a film that denounces the killing of civilians by the Israeli army through testimonies from soldiers. After being premiered and awarded in Venice, the documentary is scheduled to be screened at the New York Film Festival. On the festival's own Instagram post, there are already intimidating threats such as: "Yuval, don't come back, I recommend it". This Monday, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, deemed the documentary "an intolerable antisemitic incitement".

The Israeli Minister of Culture, Miki Zohar, has announced that he wants to revoke the citizenship of the directors of the documentary Naza, which received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival this Saturday, for showing Israel's calculated and massive strategy to destroy the Gaza Strip, with the help of AI. Zohar accuses them of "treason against the country".

The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival opened with some juicy statements in which American director Maggie Gyllenhaal –in charge of presiding over the Official Section jury– expressed her discomfort at the scarce presence of films directed by women in the competition for the Golden Lion. "We have finally discovered that women simply make worse films than men," quipped the director of The Bride! and The Lost Daughter with irony at the opening press conference. And it must be said that, before the start of the Festival, the landscape was bleak. Of the twenty-two films in the Official Competition, only two had a woman at the helm, and Kvinde ukendt (Woman unknown), by Danish filmmaker May el-Toukhy, was the only one directed solo by a woman –the other case was the documentary Naza, co-directed by Israeli Rachel Szor alongside Yuval Abraham–. Well, what began as a fair complaint has ended in a full-blown vindication, since the jury presided over by Gyllenhaal decided to award the Golden Lion to Kvinde ukendt, a film that portrays the harsh life odyssey of a woman who tries to rebuild her life in Denmark after the Second World War, when the Nordic nation was trying to clean up its image by brutally persecuting those who had collaborated with the Nazi regime.

The American actress Susan Sarandon, who in February received the International Goya in Barcelona, denounced this Sunday in Venice, where she presented the film The echo chamber, having been excluded from some projects due to her criticism of Israel and her support for Palestine.

The Venice Film Festival dressed up this Saturday and enthusiastically applauded the return of Nanni Moretti, one of the great Italian filmmakers of the last few decades. It had been thirty-seven years since the director of Caro diario had stepped onto the historic stage, since 1989 when his film Palombella rossa –which offered an acidic portrait of the bewilderment of the Italian left– was excluded from the Official Selection supposedly for political reasons; the film ended up being presented in a secondary section of the festival, the Critics' Week. However, Moretti has not shown any resentment during the presentation of Succederà questa notte, which is competing for the Golden Lion this year. In fact, the filmmaker wanted to downplay his almost four-decade distancing from the festival: “It is not true that I had anything against Venice; simply, in all this time, my films were never ready in the summer, which is when the festival is held. This time, instead of filming in the spring, I did it in the autumn and, therefore, it seemed natural to present the film there”.

Four days after a demonstration in support of the Palestinian people crossed the streets of the Lido, the Venice Film Festival hosted this Wednesday the premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, which denounces the murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab at the hands of the Israeli army. The film had generated great expectations, especially due to the comments made by the Mostra's artistic director, Alberto Barbera, who, during the presentation of the program, warned of the film's dramatic force and controversial potential. This concern translated into tightened security controls at the entrances to the festival area. Thus, with a few minutes' delay, the screening of the film that has become the main contender for the Golden Lion of the Festival began.

The day after opening the Venice Film Festival with Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers), Pedro Almodóvar (Calzada de Calatrava, 1949) explains to ARA details about the humanist aspect and the sober tone of this melodrama in which he deals with the drama of the relatives of the victims who disappeared during the Civil War.