‘The Sea’ at the European Parliament: cinema as a “political act against institutional silence”

Brussels – Can someone be deprived of the right to see the sea? Can a child who has nothing but toys, a mask, and a snorkel in their rucksack be considered a danger? Yesterday evening (9 June), the European Parliament screened “The Sea”, a film by Israeli director Shai Carmeli-Pollack. The film, which the Netanyahu government attempted to block despite public funding received prior to 2023 and its success at the Ophir Awards – the Israeli Oscars – depicts the daily reality of the occupation through the eyes of a child. This is “the film the Israeli government doesn’t want you to see,” reads the movie poster. 

The protagonist is Khaled, a 12-year-old boy from Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, who longs to reach the sea, just an hour’s drive away. During a school trip, however, the Israeli authorities deny him access to the beach because his permits have expired. Khaled’s desire seems almost ancestral, and he even goes so far as to ask his grandmother whether, at least while he was in his mother’s womb, he might have been able to feel the touch of the sea. His frustration is such that it drives him to run away and venture into Israeli territory, braving language barriers and physical dangers just to touch that water he has never seen.

A political act against “double standards”

For the MEPs from the Five Star Movement, who organised the event, the screening is not merely a cultural occasion. Valentina Palmisano stressed that the film serves as a vehicle for social critique: “This film is incredibly powerful, precisely because it tells the story of a denied right through the eyes of a child.” According to the MEP, the film lays bare how the Israeli occupation manages to deny even the simplest dream of a twelve-year-old child. 

Even harsher was the speech by Danilo Della Valle, who said that “the decision to screen this film is a political act aimed at breaking the silence that prevails within European institutions.” The MEP criticised the EU’s inaction, accusing it of never having imposed sanctions or an arms embargo on Israel, and highlighted a glaring geopolitical contradiction: while Palestinians are denied access to the sea, IDF soldiers are allowed to spend their holidays in Sardinia or other European countries. Della Valle added that the film “shows how the apartheid regime in the West Bank predates 7 October,” demonstrating that, even before the current conflict, simply swimming in the sea was a luxury forbidden to those born in that land.

Also present at the screening was MP Dario Carotenuto, who went even further by speaking of outright “political subservience.” “One wonders what power Israel wields, what leverage it might have to bring about such blatant double standards,” he declared, describing as intolerable the complicity that both the Italian and European Parliaments are allegedly showing towards Israel’s actions. 

Despite distribution difficulties, the film found a receptive audience in Italy thanks to the journalist Giulia Innocenzi and the distribution company “Moscalito Film.” The journalist admitted her astonishment at realising that “we were practically the only ones, not just in Italy but in the world, who wanted to distribute this film.” Fears of repercussions had in fact deterred many international distributors, but the public responded with extraordinary success: 40,000 viewers in Italy and 30,000 in Israel. “Going to see a film, sitting in a cinema, watching a film like “The Sea” becomes a political act in the face of the silence of the institutions and Europe’s inability to condemn the most basic things, such as human rights violations and the ongoing genocide in Gaza”, she pointed out. 

Alessandro Mantovani, a journalist with Il Fatto Quotidiano, who was present in the auditorium, offered some reflections on the current drift towards authoritarianism in the Jewish state: “This film, which in Israel’s democratic society had been funded by the Ministry of Culture, ended up being censored by that very same minister only after 7 October,” he pointed out, describing an atmosphere in which settler colonialism is attempting to erase the Palestinian presence, both physically and culturally. In this regard, in closing, Innocenzi retraced the personal journey of director Pollack, who “until the age of 30 lived the life of the average Israeli who knows nothing about the Palestinians.” It was only after experiencing the reality of the West Bank first-hand that the filmmaker decided to dedicate his life to activism and socially conscious cinema. However, the future looks uncertain: recent changes to film funding methods in Israel could make it impossible, in the future, to produce works that give a voice to Palestinian human rights or Israeli protests.