Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner has withdrawn his Suggested plan to remove o cinema From his publicly owned building over the theater’s decision to screen the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”
Instead, he said at a city commission meeting on Wednesday that he wants the theater to offer “a fair and balanced point of view” in the future Miami Herald. The update comes the same day that city officials would vote on the future of the theater.
Commissioner Tanya Katzoff Bhatt, Laura Dominguez, Alex Fernandez, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and Joseph Magazine expressed their disagreement with Meiner’s plan at the said meeting, while David Suarez offered his support. The vast majority of local participants were in contrast to Meiner’s proposals, according to the essay.
“I legitimately regarded this as a general security threat,” the mayor said. “I really appreciate the passion we saw today.”
On Monday, more than 600 members in the international filmmaking community – including Michael Moore, Barry Jenkins, Marisa Tomei, Ezra Edelman and Phil Lord – signed. an open letter condemning Meiner for his threat of censorship. The International Documentary Association, The Independent Cinema Coalition Art House Convergence and Pen America’s Florida Director had also stated against Meiner’s proposed $ 40,000 cut in financing of city grants.
The controversy began when O Cinema announced views for Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s Doc, who won the best documentary film on 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.”
Meiner, who is Jewish, responded by sending a letter to O Cinema CEO 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 Last week 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.”
Meiner then replied, “normalize hatred and then spread anti -Semitism in a facility owned by taxpayers at Miami Beach, after O Cinema admitted” concern for anti -Semitic rhetoric “is unfair to the values of our city and residents and should not be tolerated.”
“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.
