Gaza cinema academy launches in Venice with celebrity backing
Palestinian filmmakers launch academy to preserve Gaza’s stories and train new generation despite devastating Israeli assault
VENICE (MNTV) — A new Gaza Cinema Academy has been launched at the Venice Film Festival to train Palestinian filmmakers and provide them with a platform to document and tell their own stories.
The academy was unveiled by Palestinian filmmakers Ezzaldeen Shalh and Mai Masri, who founded the initiative to help emerging filmmakers in Gaza develop professional skills and produce work from their own perspectives.
The project has attracted support from prominent figures in the international film industry, including US-Egyptian filmmaker and comedian Ramy Youssef, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, Italian producer Graziella Bildesheim and Alaa Karkouti, co-founder of Cairo-based Mad Solutions.
Palestinian filmmakers Annemarie Jacir, Hiam Abbass and Saleh Bakri have also endorsed the academy, adding their names to an initiative seeking to sustain Gaza’s cultural and cinematic production amid the destruction caused by Israel’s genocide.
The academy has already begun its educational work. A nine-month Gaza Filmmaking Diploma started in March with 25 young Palestinian women enrolled in the program.
The course combines academic instruction with practical filmmaking, allowing participants to acquire technical skills and develop their own film projects.
Organizers aim to expand the initiative into a full filmmaking degree that could receive accreditation from Al Quds Open University.
The academy also plans to establish links with international film festivals and cultural organizations, potentially giving Palestinian filmmakers greater access to the global film industry and audiences outside the besieged territory.
For its founders, the project represents more than professional training. It is an attempt to preserve Palestinian memory and enable Gazans to portray their own experiences at a time when Israel’s brutal genocide has inflicted enormous destruction on Gaza and disrupted many aspects of civilian and cultural life.
Shalh, the academy’s director and a film academic, said cinema could serve as a means of preserving memory and enabling Palestinians to control how their experiences are represented.
He told Variety, as cited by Arab News, that cinema in Gaza provides a way to preserve memory, reclaim the ability to shape Palestinians’ own image and equip younger generations to tell their stories.
The academy’s launch at one of the world’s major film festivals gives the project an international stage at a time when Palestinian filmmakers are increasingly using cinema to bring attention to the human and cultural consequences of the war in Gaza.
By creating opportunities for training, production and international collaboration, the initiative seeks to ensure that Gaza’s cinematic voice survives despite the extraordinary devastation inflicted on the territory.
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