Cannes Film Festival on Edge as Hollywood’s Israeli-Palestinian Divide Widens
variety.comCannes Film Festival is bracing for a tumultuous 77th edition. As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, attendees and organizers anticipate protests, politically charged speeches and pins and flags that signal solidarity with Palestinian civilians, Israeli hostages and Ukrainians looking for more military assistance from the West as they try to fend off the Russian invasion.
But if the festival has its way, there will be none of that. The city of Cannes preemptively banned protests along the Croisette and its surroundings during the 11-day festival.
Likewise, the festival hired private security to trail the Competition jurors including Eva Green and Lily Gladstone to keep activists from approaching them.
And while the festival was initially amenable to a plan for Arab filmmakers to wear pins showing support for the Palestinians under siege in Gaza, it changed course and will ban them as well as pins that pay homage to the more than 100 remaining Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct.
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