Documentarians, Miami Beach Mayor Clash Over No Other Land

Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner wants to shut down the city-funded O Cinema after it screened the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. 700+ filmmakers — among them Oscar-winning documentarians like Michael Moore and Alex Gibney — have signed an open letter protesting what they see as censorship. “We as filmmakers invite critical discussion of any film, but your decision to punish O Cinema for screening No Other Land is an attack on freedom of expression, the right of artists to tell their stories, and a violation of the First Amendment,” the letter reads in part. “It is also an offense to the people of Miami Beach, and Greater Miami as a whole, who deserve to have access to a diverse range of films and perspectives.”

After the O Cinema screened No Other Land, Mayor Meiner called for the city to terminate the theater’s lease and “immediately discontinue” around $40,000 in city funding. He called the film “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents.”

Alfred Spellman, a Miami Beach native who produced docs such as Cocaine Cowboys, says the film’s content is immaterial if one believes in freedom of speech. “This is a case that is definitional of what the First Amendment is supposed to protect against, which is government encroachment on speech,” he told Variety. “The Mayor is trying to claim that the content of the documentary is anti-semitic, but that doesn’t matter. So long as it is not legally obscene, the mayor has no business interfering with what the O Cinema chooses to program.”

No Other Land documents Palestinian resistance between 2019 and 2023. It was made by both Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, with Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Basel Adra sharing directing credit. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Film, but still does not have a large U.S. distributor. The film recently expanded to 120 screens with the help of mTuckman Media.

• [Variety]
• [Prism]

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• No Other Land Makes a Statement at the Oscars