In a particularly ironic incident in the ongoing de facto international boycott of Israeli culture in many quarters, Moshe Rosenthal’s Ophir Award-winning movie, Tell Me Everything, has been disinvited from a Swiss queer film festival that goes by the name "Everyone’s Perfect," following threats from local organizations, including a Palestinian film festival, Variety reported on Thursday.
The Geneva-based festival, which opens on October 9, had previously included Tell Me Everything, a drama about a boy who discovers his father is gay at the height of the AIDS epidemic, in its lineup.
Tell Me Everything had its world premiere this year at the Sundance Film Festival and is Israel’s official selection for consideration for Best International Feature Film Oscar. It recently won 10 Ophir Awards and received a record 16 nominations. In September, it acquired international distributors that will bring it to Europe, Australia, and other countries. Critics around the world have praised it as a powerful coming-of-age film that deals with the issue of discrimination against gay men.
Palestinian film festival pushes boycott over Israeli film
But all of these achievements were not enough to make the Everyone’s Perfect festival stand by the movie when it was threatened with a boycott. Variety reported that Charlotte Sector, the festival’s communications spokesperson, said the festival received threats the previous week from the festival Palestine Filmer C’est Exister, which is also held in Geneva.
“They started writing messages like ‘We’re going to boycott your festival’ - boycott, boycott, just boycott. When people mention boycotting a festival that is a very big threat,” she said.
Variety reported that other groups joined the Palestinian festival in threatening a boycott. Although Sector acknowledged that she admired the film, the festival asked Rosenthal and the producers for a statement on the current political situation, although the film takes place in the 1980s and 1990s.
In a statement to Variety, the producers of the film said, “A film does not represent a government, and filmmakers should not be held responsible for its policies. Many of us in Israel oppose the war and are deeply critical of our government. Tell Me Everything is a human story about love, family, identity, and healing. We made it to create connection and conversation, not to represent a government. Would Iranian or American filmmakers be asked to make similar declarations about their governments before their films could be shown? We care deeply about being part of an international film community where difficult questions and different perspectives can exist. Festivals should make room for that connection and conversation - not exclude artists because of where they come from.”
But Everyone’s Perfect chose to do just that – exclude the film because of where Rosenthal is from and where it is set. Everyone may be perfect in the eyes of the organizers of this festival, but to paraphrase the famous line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some people turn out to be more perfect than others.
Israeli film excluded out of desire to avoid controversy
According to a Swiss newspaper report quoted by Variety, Sylvie Cachin, the festival’s artistic director, said: “The cancellation isn’t related to the film itself, but to the desire to avoid controversy just days before the festival’s opening.”
This is an interesting statement, and one that is revealing of the current climate in the cultural world, because in the past, film festivals were places that welcomed a diversity of opinion and sought to foster debate. Now, the specter of controversy is enough to get a film banned - rather than welcomed - and a festival director has admitted that openly.
In a similar case, Nadav Lapid, the most critical of the Israeli government of all Israeli directors, was disinvited from the jury of FID Marseille Film Festival and screenings of his movies were cancelled in June.
Sector was quoted by Variety as saying about the decision to boot Tell Me Everything: “It was a way of saying we’re all coming together, we need to come together.” That the way for “all” to “come together” is by excluding an Israeli movie is an irony that Sector and her colleagues do not seem to register. Some people are simply too evil to be included these days, in the eyes of much of the international film community, and these people are called Israelis.