More than 50 prominent Israeli documentary filmmakers have shared an open letter expressing “profound shame” and “helplessness” over Israel’s actions in Gaza and declaring their support for the international film community’s boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.
The documentarians’ letter, dated September 15, 2025, and signed by internationally recognized filmmakers, states that the signatories “wholeheartedly support the global filmmakers’ boycott against us” and names the “mass murder” and “genocide” committed by the Israeli state in Gaza.
The letter also calls on the international documentary community “to hold itself to the same standards and focus on its domestic role: resisting the silence and complicity of European and American governments in the massacre in Gaza.” The filmmakers specifically cite support from Donald Trump as enabling the continuation of the conflict.
The documentary filmmakers’ statement comes in response to a pledge signed by more than 3,000 international film industry professionals, directors, and actors in early September to boycott Israeli state-funded cultural institutions until Israel ends its assault on Gaza and occupation of Palestinian territories. That boycott, first reported by the Guardian, specifically targets institutions that receive funding from the Israeli government while calling for the protection of Palestinian cultural workers and freedom of expression.
Many Israeli film institutions and filmmaker guilds responded with statements and interviews, arguing that boycotts would harm Israeli filmmakers who are creating anti-war stories and claiming that such actions would silence dissenting voices within Israel. Last week, Lior Elefant, of the Israeli Documentary Forum, released a joint statement with Merav Etrog Bar, of the Directors Guild of Israel, with similar sentiments: “While Israeli film-makers are not their government, we bear responsibility for its actions and find ourselves caught between a rock and a hard place: on one side, attempts at silencing from within, and on the other, international boycott from abroad.”
This documentary filmmakers’ letter directly contradicts this narrative, with the signatories explicitly stating: “For us, there is no comfort in the complex, sensitive, and critical films we have made over the years as part of our role and mission; they do not absolve us of responsibility for the atrocities carried out in our name.”
The filmmakers cite what they describe as the systematic killing of approximately 64,000 Palestinian civilians, including 20,000 children. While condemning Hamas’s actions as having “no justification whatsoever,” the letter argues that “they cannot excuse this brutal war of revenge, which has already surpassed the atrocities of Hamas many times over.”
Among the signatories, who are not writing as state-sanctioned representatives of any institution, are some of Israel’s most internationally acclaimed documentary filmmakers.
They include Avi Mograbi, whose films have long premiered at Cannes and Berlinale (Z32 and The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation); Yulie Cohen, a former chair of the Documentary Forum, who gained international recognition for her trilogy My Terrorist, My Land Zion, and My Brother; Dani Rosenberg (the Cannes-premiered autofiction The Death of Cinema and My Father Too and last year’s Venice-selected fiction film Of Dogs and Men); Barak Heymann, one of Israel’s most prolific documentary director-producers and the head of the film school at Beit Berl College (Berlinale Audience Award-winner Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?); Ada Ushpiz (Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt and Children); producer Liran Atzmor (Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner The Law in These Parts [2011]); and Pini Schatz, a documentary filmmaker and the director of programs at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the longtime host venue of DocAviv.
This public stance by Israeli documentary filmmakers represents a significant departure from typical cultural institution responses to international boycotts, marking one of the most explicit endorsements of such measures by prominent Israeli artists themselves.
The open letter is republished in full below.
An Open Letter
Sep. 15th 2025
We, a group of documentary filmmakers in Israel, feel profound shame, pain, daily torment, and helplessness in the face of the horrors of mass murder, destruction and internal transfer (for now), and starvation that the State of Israel is carrying out in our name in Gaza.
We reject with disgust all attempts at denial, silencing, and whitewashing, with the systematic use of euphemisms – preferring to speak of “hunger” instead of “starvation” and “war” instead of “genocide.”
The facts speak for themselves: about 64,000 civilians in Gaza have been killed, including some 20,000 infants and children, and more than one hundred thousand have been wounded. To these we must add the thousands of innocent Palestinians kidnapped from Gaza still held as bargaining chips in Israeli captivity, and the daily killing, destruction, and abuse in the West Bank.
We cannot, nor do we wish to, absolve ourselves of our responsibility – by our being part of the Israeli collective – for the crimes being committed in the West Bank and Gaza, an hour away from the bustling cafés of Tel Aviv – Jaffa.
The horrific crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 have no justification whatsoever – even within the framework of the legitimate Palestinian struggle for national freedom and against the occupation. But they cannot excuse this brutal war of revenge, which has already surpassed the atrocities of Hamas many times over. The terrible price has been and still is being paid also by the hundreds of Israelis kidnapped into Gaza, some of whom have already been released or have died, while about twenty remain abandoned by our government to wither away in Hamas’s tunnels.
Without removing from Hamas an ounce of responsibility for this heinous war crime, under the current circumstances the blood of the hostages is on the hands of all whose hunger for revenge and show of brute force blinds them, hardens their hearts, leading them to prefer war over the lives of the hostages.
We believe that revenge will bring no remedy to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, whose roots lie in a century of power politics. We believe that without a just political settlement – one that respects the national, civil, and human rights of both peoples – there is no hope for our country.
As documentary filmmakers who have dedicated their lives to recording different aspects of reality in our country, and some of us, especially to documenting the occupation, we are acutely aware of the importance of recognizing the truth as a first step toward changing reality. For this reason, we wholeheartedly support the global filmmakers’ boycott against us.
We grieve manifestations of denial, self-victimization, covert and overt complicity, and self-censorship that have also spread within our own ranks. For us, there is no comfort in the complex, sensitive, and critical films we have made over the years as part of our role and mission; they do not absolve us of responsibility for the atrocities carried out in our name.
We call on the international documentary community, our artistic home, to hold itself to the same standards and focus on its domestic role: resisting the silence and complicity of European and American governments in the massacre in Gaza. Our government thrives and gains audacity by the backing of Donald Trump, who also makes a point of neutralizing the protests of European leaders; without him, this accursed war could not have lasted so long.
We live in a reality of fracture. Israeli democracy remains strong, despite all the assaults upon it, but it has never been as fragile as now. The incitement and hatred between left and right in our society have never reached such extremes. Attempts at silencing and Intimidation are taking on violent dimensions.
We hope that along with the justified boycott against us, you will not forget the day after, which must come, and that you will not close the scroll on the positive potential within our society. We yearn for days when we can once again collaborate in fruitful creation.