Michael Moore, Barry Jenkins, Marisa Tomei, Ezra Edelman, Phil Lord and more than 600 other members of the international filmmaking community have signed an open letter to the mayor and the Miami Beach City Commission over their proposed censorship of “no other country.”
“We, the signed members of the International Filmmaking Community, write to express our deep anxiety and condemnation of your attempts to censor and cinema, a local independent cinema, for its exhibition of the Academy Award-winning documentary, ‘No Other Land’, by retaining its financing and ending Monday.
“O Cinema has a long history of supporting important and various views that promote dialogue. We as filmmakers invite critical discussion about any movie, but your decision to punish O -cinema for screening “no other country” is an attack on freedom of speech, the artists’ right to tell their stories and a violation of the first amendment “continues it.” It is also a crime for the people at Miami Beach and Greater Miami as a whole, as a whole, as a whole, as a whole, as a whole, as a whole, as a wholeness, as a wholeness, as a wholeness, as a wholeness, as a wholeness, as a wholeness, as a whole, as a whole,
The message ends, “We urge you to rethink your decision and allow the O -cinema to continue to work without disturbance.”
The letter comes two days before the city is set to determine the permit for the O -Biograph’s lease agreement with a vote after the theater originally chose to screen Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s Doc, which won the best documentary film at 2025 Oscars. The film from the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers crowns the displacement of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta by Israeli military and settlers after a court decision declared the area as “closed military zone.”
On Sunday, the International Documentary Association and Independent Cinema Coalition Art House Convergens released a joint statement in a similar way to criticized Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner over his threat to terminate the lease agreement and withdraw more than $ 40,000 in financing the city.
Meiner, who is Jewish, first sent a letter to the O-cinema Vivian Marthell and urged her to cancel the shows and called the movie “A one-sided propaganda attack against the Jewish people.”
“My first reaction to Mayor Meiner Hot was made during hardness,” Marthell told Associated Press On Thursday after she originally agreed to draw the movie. “After reflecting on the broader consequences for freedom of expression and O Cinema’s mission, I (together with O Cinema Board and staff) agreed that it was crucial to show this acclaimed film.”
“Normalize hatred and then spread anti -Semitism in a facility owned by taxpayers on Miami Beach, after O Cinema admitted” concern for anti -Semitic rhetoric “, is unfair to the values for our city and residents and should not be tolerated,” wrote Meiner then in response.
Pen America’s Florida director Katie Blankenship also called the city’s tactics “obviously unconstitutional.”
“No Other Land” is the academy’s first best documentary function winner to win without an American distributor. The release has been handled through an independent book on theater-by-theater basis.
