Defying calls to boycott Israel, Virginia film festival doubles ticket sales

The 14th annual Richmond International Film Festival, which was held from Sept. 23 to Sept. 28 in the Virginia capital city, was a success but came at a cost, according to Heather Waters, the festival’s founder.

“As of five minutes ago, my executive assistant just resigned,” Waters told JNS. “It’s a complete disaster.”

The anti-Israel staffer turned down an offer for a new contract and a request to stay on at least for a week of important post-production work, according to Waters, who is not Jewish. “It is heartbreaking, but essentially, this has been going on since the Oct. 7 attack,” she said.

Despite calls for anti-Israel boycotts of the festival, the six-day event drew a record-setting audience, Waters told JNS. The festival became a center of controversy, largely due to the Israel embassy in Washington funding travel to the state capital for Israeli artists to attend.

More than 170 independent short- and feature-length films from around the world were shown in local theaters and virtually. Musicians also performed in several venues. In all, 20 countries were represented.

A protest of the festival in 2023—one year after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel—centered on one particular film, about which people spoke of harm caused by undergoing “gender-affirming” medical procedures.

“We thought it was a hard film but a wonderful film to build empathy, actually,” Waters told JNS. “But there was this group that did not see it that way.” She added that the festival received hateful messages over social media.

The same group that protested the film “reached out to us demanding that we divest and not work with the embassy,” Waters said. “I was not willing to do that, and they just went all in.”

The anti-Israel group “started calling every sponsor that we have—all of our venues, our filmmakers, our artists that we were programming,” Waters told JNS. “Whoever they could.”

It also accused the festival organizers of supporting genocide.

“It got so bad last spring that I did a cease-and-desist on the one person that I knew was leading it,” Waters said.

Despite the pressure, the festival board and staff backed her, and she refused to take the Israeli embassy logo off the festival’s website or marketing materials, she said.

"A whole other fire"

Several months before this year’s event, a Virginia singer set to perform at the festival signed a pledge with 80 artists and companies in the city of Richmond, boycotting the festival and its connection to the Israeli embassy. They also ran a social-media campaign to that effect.

Waters convinced the singer, who goes by Deau Eyes, to back down and play. As a result, the protest group posted “wanted” signs accusing the singer of supporting genocide and hating transgender people.

The festival organizer told JNS that the singer asked her, “How can my own community turn on me like this so fast?”

After protesters put one of the “wanted” posters on the ground outside the venue in which Deau Eyes was set to perform, the singer backed out again.

“It’s terrorism, in my view,” Waters told JNS. “She’s frightened, and the next day, she sends a letter that she’s pulling out of her performance.”

“She posts her story on her social media, addressing her community for doing that, and how unsafe she feels, but also kind of throws us under the bus, which I was shocked by,” Waters said. “But yet not shocked at this point. So that started a whole other fire.”

The venue where the singer was set to play, and which was slated to host other festival events, also caved to the protesters, according to Waters.

The venue booked two performers, who had canceled appearances at the festival, under a “Free Palestine” show scheduled for the same night as the festival’s wrap party. The venue also issued a statement disparaging the festival.

An intern who worked for Waters put up a “river to the sea” flag in front of the Israeli embassy staff, who came to the festival despite what Waters described as safety risks. Waters hired extra security for them, as well as for events that featured Israeli artists, including a screening of the documentary film “A Letter to David,” about Israeli hostage David Cunio, 35, kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz by Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7.

Somewhat ironically, Cunio and his twin brother, Eitan, have acted in Israeli films. Their younger brother, Ariel Cunio, 28, was also taken hostage and remains in Gaza.

“I should have fired her on the spot,” Waters told JNS, of the intern. “That morning, I felt very alone.” She looked around and wondered, “Where are other people leading in speaking up for what is right?” she said.

"I’m calling on our community"

Seeing the protest movement gain traction, Waters feared the festival would collapse.

“People are coming to me—telling me to just get rid of the embassy logo. I’m like, ‘I’m not going to do it,’” she told JNS. (She noted that embassies of other countries provided similar funding for artists to come to Richmond.)

A local culture publication, which Waters said tends to publish “fun” previews of the festival, pressed her in an interview about whether she thinks Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“I do not,” she told the interviewer. “What I would rather talk about is Hamas.”

“He went into this whole line of questioning, where he grilled me for the next 30 to 45 minutes just on this one topic,” she said.

The interviewer asked her about a UN commission’s determination that Israel was guilty of genocide. “I really don’t care what the United Nations says,” she told JNS of her response to the interviewer.

Waters holds a graduate degree in international relations with a concentration on the Middle East. She told JNS that the more she learns, the more she realizes she doesn’t understand.

“But what I do know is my graduate paper was on Hezbollah. I know how these terrorist groups work. I’ve read. I’ve researched. I know what they do is they put their people in the line of fire,” Waters told the interviewer, she said.

She told JNS that she asked the interviewer why he wasn’t asking and writing about Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault and atrocities on civilians.

Waters noted that the local Jewish Community Center was also targeted last year for participating in the festival. “I’m calling on all of our community—Jewish, non-Jewish, all of us—to speak up,” she said. “You can’t have one foot in and one foot out.”

Several Israeli movies won awards at this year’s festival, including a Holocaust survivor romance film, and due to the boycotts, an Israeli film sales company asked Waters to join a delegation to Israel of filmmakers and those in the industry.

Participants met with Oct. 7 survivors and toured the sites. Waters, currently in Israel for a two-week trip, who plans to return in November for an Israeli music festival, told JNS that she hopes she gets to meet with Palestinians as well.

Earlier this week, she visited kibbutzim impacted by the Oct. 7 attacks near Gaza and the site of the Nova festival.

“Why are these stories not making it out into the world?” she lamented. “I fear we are all losing this battle.”

© JNS