Soura Film Festival, the so-called “First Queer Middle East & North African Film Festival” completely excludes Palestinian filmmakers and has chosen to highlight Israeli films. Soft or strong, normalization is normalization!
This is not a theoretical debate, but a concrete demand to not exclude Palestine and the Palestinians from the discussion. The very fact that we need to write to SOURA about their exclusion of Palestine is absurd in this situation. But our moral responsibility demands us to expose such complicity wherever it appears.
Last year at the Radical Queer March, PoC, Black and Arab queers have made a loud and clear statement about the need of solidarity to exist between Black, PoC, queers, and other marginalized communities in the left, and the Palestinian struggle. We are not willing to compromise this victory in exchange for some movies being shown in a shallow context without including any Palestinian films or participants.
We are upset and angry, because this festival hijacks the queer topic in Berlin without understanding the problematic context and the way that it has been instrumentalized to support a Zionist stance at the expense of Palestininans. While Palestinian films and participants are absent from the SOURA program, Israeli films are being heavily represented – arguably even excessively represented for a festival with a program of this size. Especially against the background of the current political context and recent ‘normalization’ agreements having been made between Israel and UAE and Bahrain, we cannot see this overt representation in what is a festival for films from the MENA region as anything other than an act of normalization.
We can only assume that these curatorial decisions are having to do with the strong input of those who provide the funding for the festival. Any decision to prioritize the funders’ wishes comes at the price of marginalizing voices of color in Palestine and of silencing the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid. Moreover, the presenting of Israeli productions in a non-critical context alongside Arab films surely provides comfort and the reassurance of white dominance for the overtly white German audience of the festival.
Last year the Radical Queer March in Berlin already attempted to exclude and silence Palestine and the Palestinian struggle. The outrage amongst radical queers, Palestinians, Arabs, PoCs and our allies lead to the formation of what then became the largest block of the march and the intersectional ‘Queers for Palestine’ theme overtook the event.
With over 500 of us marching together, we tried to decolonize a Berlin space after a decade-long struggle for participation and acceptance. We finally managed to do achieve this during the Radical Queer March, where we felt our collective power and were thrilled, energized, and hopeful for the future. We shouted against the level of aggression and outright physical violence that we were experiencing from fellow queer organizers and other demonstrators who attempted to silence us. At that time, the most prominent among these other anti-Palestinian demonstrators were the anti-deutsche Zionists and so-called German ‘leftists’ who didn’t hesitate to call the cops on queers of color, migrants and refugees.
In a certain way, the SOURA Festival is even more upsetting and frustrating for us because those who curate it are queer, Arab, PoC and are a part of the Left who we generally are considering as our allies in our struggle and a part of our community. But we cannot accept a shady and non-transparent over-representation of Israel in the program while Palestine is completely absent.
The Palestinian issue is one of modern-day colonialism. To erase it from a queer festival about the Middle East and North Africa is to succumb to the pinkwashing that is used by imperial intruding powers. Taking funding in exchange for the erasure of Palestine means being complicit in the white imperialists‘ and colonialists‘ stage-managing of a tolerant and democratic nation and to be complicit in the silencing and oppressing of Palestinian voices.
Again, we can only assume the intentions of the curators. But as queer Palestinians, PoCs, Arabs and allies of the Palestinian struggle, we will not remain silent when we observe the exclusion of Palestine and Palestinians.
We notice the lack of representation of Palestine in the festival program in the same way as we notice the everyday Israeli crimes against humanity, and just as we notice how Israel attempts to pinkwash Apartheid. We won’t accept being used as fig leaves whenever it is convenient to allow us to speak and represent ourselves while our brothers and sisters at the same time are being misrepresented and have to hide their identities and struggles in Berlin.
We find the decisions of the curators very problematic and insulting. Nevertheless, we still would like to address the SOURA Festival as potential allies in our struggle and we are calling for them to issue an apology and amend in good time the lack of any representation of Palestine in their program.
We call on the invited filmmakers and participants to show their support to our anti-racist, anti-colonial, queer and feminist movement for Palestinian self-determination by demanding that the festival curators address this issue and correct their actions.
Let’s be critical, and let our actions reflect our criticism: make ‘Queer’ a political topic and put Palestine in it!