The interior of the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley, one of the venues that Artists for Palestine UK urged to boycott Seret.The interior of the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley, one of the venues that Artists for Palestine UK urged to boycott Seret.
“I feel very frustrated,” she said. “But we are not going to cave and we’re not going to cancel the festival. Some people told us ‘maybe you will skip this year’ but for us it’s not even an option.” In Amsterdam, two of the main cinemas the festival had worked with cancelled screenings “because they were afraid for demonstrations and for their workers”, Haroush added. At one screening in the city, “one of the demonstrators succeeded to get in the cinema hall, stood up with a Palestinian flag and started to shout. There was an Israeli guy in the cinema from Kibbutz Be’eri who was really shaken and upset from this.”Seret screenings this year over safety concerns.