Egyptians slam Israel focus at Toronto film fest

Egyptian filmmakers and directors protested Tuesday the Toronto film festival's spotlight on Tel Aviv, which critics have slammed as succumbing to Israeli propaganda.

First-time feature director Ahmad Abdall withdrew his film "Heliopolis" from the schedule to protest the presentation of 10 films on the Jewish metropolis for the festival's "City to City" program.

Ahmed Maher's "The Traveler" may also be pulled at its producer's request, said a festival spokeswoman.

In an interview, festival co-director Cameron Bailey had lauded Egyptian filmmakers for "having a really strong year, asking tough questions of their society, really digging deep about what's going on there and telling good stories."

He had singled out both "Heliopolis" and "The Traveler," as well as Cairo-born pioneering filmmaker Yousry Nasrallah's "Scheherazade, Tell me a Story" for praise.

In a new trend, Egyptian films were winning over audiences at film festivals worldwide this year, offering highly artistic, yet accessible films that transcend "the usual melodrama of Egyptian commercial cinema," he told AFP.

And several of the films were eagerly awaited in Toronto.

Israeli propaganda

Just prior to the festival's start, however, some 50 intellectuals and filmmakers, including British director Ken Loach, accused North America's premier film festival of "complicity with the Israeli propaganda machine" over its spotlight this year on Tel Aviv, given "the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program."

The program "ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories" after a "mass exiling of the Palestinian population" in 1948, they said in an open letter to festival organizers.

The letter's signatories included Canadian sociologist Naomi Klein, American actress Jane Fonda and several Israeli filmmakers.

Monday, Fonda withdrew her support for the protest, saying she had not carefully read the letter and now calling it "unnecessarily inflammatory."