Movie pulled from film fest

ONE of the films in the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE) Israeli Film Festival was pulled from its final three screenings after complaints from the public over its depiction of Israel.

The Canadian-French-Israeli co-production Inch’Allah, by Canadian director Anais Barbeau-Lavalette, is about a young Canadian doctor who works in a makeshift clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp and becomes friends with an Israeli soldier in Jerusalem (played by Israeli actress Sivan Levy)

Levy visited Australia this month as a guest of the festival and appeared at Q&A sessions with audience members in Melbourne and Sydney.

Following the Melbourne screening, audience member David Schulberg wrote to AICE chairman Albert Dadon to complain that Inch’Allah gravely misrepresented the situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to Schulberg, the film was guilty of “distorting and distending the facts on the ground” and “using stereotypical symbols of Israeli brutality”.

“This film should not have been part of the program as it was wrongly touted as being representative of modern Israeli cinema,” he wrote.

Schulberg noted that Barbeau-Lavalette was one of 500 Quebec artists  who publicly signed a petition in 2009 accusing Israel of apartheid and supporting the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

Organisers of the AICE Israeli Film Festival said in a statement they had received a number of complaints over Inch’Allah.

“As this film is causing intense personal upset to a segment of our audience, who view the film as promoting an ideology which is contrary to Australian, Israeli and Western values, the festival has decided to cancel the final three screenings of the film in order to prevent further upset to these patrons who have been personally touched by such events as dealt with by the film.”

DANNY GOCS

A scene from the film.

Get The AJN Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up