Film industry ‘institutionally antisemitic’ says BAFTA-nominated producer

The documentary Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again was “shut down at every turn” within the film industry, an industry the film’s producer says is guilty of “institutional antisemitism”.

Leo Pearlman, who produced the 2024 documentary, said the film, which he “would categorically argue is completely apolitical” and “makes no statements”, was shunned by film associations and by industry advertisers and festivals.

Speaking as part of a panel chaired by barrister and television host Rob Rinder during a Jewish Chronicle event to discuss Jews in the arts on Thursday evening, the BAFTA-nominated producer admitted there was “not much” to be optimistic about in the film industry currently.

He told the audience of more than 200 people: “I’m not going to mince words and say its anti-Israel and anti-Zionism, institutional antisemitism is what it is.”

He claimed certain Jewish people are “more than welcome” in the arts, but only those who create content “deemed acceptable by those who sit to the far left and its extremity.”

Contrasting the industry’s reception to the Nova documentary to one that was seen as acceptable by it, Pearlman predicted that the 2024 film No Other Land – which is a “definitely very pointed and negative” film about settlers in the West Bank – will win this year’s Oscar for best documentary.

The film, made by a Palestinian and Israeli collective, has already been shortlisted for an Oscar, selected by film festivals across the world and picked up multiple awards.

Pearlman said the Nova documentary, however, despite being “made very clearly to be just about” the massacre itself and uses footage “from only those who filmed the massacre and those who suffered it”, has been “shut down at every single turn by the International Documentary Association, by advertisers, and by festivals.

“At every single turn that film has absolutely no chance whatsoever of competing with No Other Land. If you’re making a film like No Other Land, you’ve got no problem at all. If you’re making a film like ours, then the arts is not a place for you.”

He said the film world, much like in other creative industries, was currently being led by an excess of “really passionate beliefs from junior and mid-level, very vocal [industry employees] whose beliefs very much align with those who march on a Saturday.”

The problem is exacerbated by people at the top of the industry too, who Pearlman accuses of being “complicit, whether through silence or personal conviction.”

Pearlman also accused the BBC, who streams the Nova documentary on iPlayer, of “reacting” to its creation by feeling as though they needed to have an opposing equivalent for balance, and so released the documentary Life and Death in Gaza just two weeks after the Nova film.

The BBC and the International Documentary Association has been approached for comment.

Alongside Rinder, Pearlman was joined on the panel by literary agent Neil Blair, actress Louisa Clein, chief executive of UK Jewish Film Michael Etherton, and talent manager Professor Jonathan Shalit OBE, who all echoed similarly alarming allegations of discrimination against openly Jewish people and bodies in the arts.

Blair, on whether Jews had a place in the publishing world, said: “Yes, but, and it’s a big but.”

Even before October 7, Blair said there was censorship being applied to books that deal with Jewish themes or of Israeli origin, but after the massacre that phenomenon has only been “accelerated”.

“The people doing the censoring are not stupid,” he said, “they’re not going to get back to me or any other agent and say they declined because the author is Jewish. They’d lose their job. It’s much more subtle than that.”

Blair says he knows people in the industry who “literally hide their Jewishness”.

Actress Louise Clein, who shared that she also has felt the need to hide her Jewishness at times in her career, spoke about instances in which she has felt excluded from mainstream acting work because of who she is.

“Whether Jews are welcome in the creative industry or not,” she said, “we are in it. We have thousands of years of stories to tell, and I think we have to find a way to tell these stories.”

The Emmerdale actress, who claims to have lost both friends and opportunities in the industry post-October 7, added: “The conversation over here has to be not whether we’re welcome, but how do we fight [our] way back in, and if we have to fight twice as hard so be it.”