Hollywood should be ashamed of the way it has treated stars like Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo for opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, a member of the Cannes Film Festival jury said on Tuesday, with big studios conspicuously absent this year.
Paul Laverty, who wrote two films that won Cannes’ top prize, was cheered as he lambasted the studios and praised the French festival for using an image of Sarandon in Thelma & Louise for its poster this year.
“Isn’t it fascinating to see Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo blacklisted because of their views in opposing the murder of women and children in Gaza? Shame on Hollywood, people who do that,” the Scottish-born writer, who was arrested last year at a pro-Palestine protest, added.
“They’re the best of us,” said Laverty, who won best screenplay at Cannes for I, Daniel Blake and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
“I just hope we don’t get bombed now,” he joked.
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Accusations of antisemitism
Sarandon was dropped by her US agents and accused of antisemitism in 2023 after she told a pro-Palestine rally in New York City that people “afraid of being Jewish at this time are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence”.
She said earlier this year that her outspoken stance on Gaza made it “impossible for me to even be on television”, never mind work in Hollywood.
But Laverty made an impassioned plea for filmmakers not to shy away from politics “when madmen lead the blind”, quoting William Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Cannes jury backs political filmmaking
