The 2009 Toronto International Film Festival is facing a barrage of protests over a series of movies scheduled to be screened to spotlight the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, in the festival’s inaugural City to City program.

Canadian filmmaker John Greyson

Canadian filmmaker John Greyson withdrew his documentary short film on the first queer cultural festival in Sarajevo and published an open letter to the festival outlining his protest of the Tel Aviv showcase. Over 1,000 international filmmakers, actors, writers, scholars, activists and musicians signed onto the letter, including Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte.
“We are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine,” read the letter, which several Israeli filmmakers also signed onto.

“This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.”

Jane Fonda

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has praised the group for “assuring that Tel Aviv is not celebrated while Palestinians continue to suffer, sometimes invisibly, under Israeli apartheid and military occupation.”
“To celebrate Tel Aviv or any Israeli city for that matter is indefensible,” the organization said in its own release, “particularly after this year’s lethal assault on Gaza, while Israel continues building its illegal apartheid wall and settlements and extends its network of checkpoints that suffocate the Palestinian population.”

Harry Belafonte

“In 2008, Toronto was selected as a ‘test market’ for a year-long public relations campaign launched by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to improve Israel’s image. Israel’s consul general, Amir Gissin, announced then that the culmination of this ‘Brand Israel’ campaign would be at the TIFF.
“Whether the City to City program is officially connected to the “Brand Israel” campaign or not, it is rebranding to the core: it serves to normalize Israel’s international image, an image tarnished by decades of military brutality and violations of international law.”

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Palestinian artists in Ramallah were also protesting the festival from outside the offices of the Canadian representative in the West Bank.

Danny Glover

Festival co-director Cameron Bailey, said in an Aug. 28 open letter “The goal of City to City is to take a closer look at global cities through a cinematic lens, especially cities where film contributes to or chronicles social change in compelling ways… We recognize that Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and that the city remains contested ground. As a festival that values debate and the exchange of cultures, we will continue to screen the best films we can find from around the world.”
The festival is generally considered the second most important film festival in the world after Cannes.