500 French Cinema Figures Get Behind Silent March For Peace In Paris

Melanie Goodfellow

17 November 2023 at 10:39 am·3-min read

Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard and Jacques Audiard are among 500 French cinema professionals to have signed an open letter in support of a silent march for peace in Paris this Sunday.

The initiative – created in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict and its ongoing reverberations around the world – is being spearheaded by the newly launched Une Autre Voix (Another Voice) collective.

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“This fratricidal war affects us all, and regardless of our reasons or affinities on each side of the wall, we want it to cease and that both peoples finally live in peace,” reads the letter.

“This is why we are organizing a silent, united, humanist and peaceful march that will open with a single long white banner. No political claims nor slogans. White flags, white handkerchiefs are welcome.”

Belgian-Moroccan actress Lubna Azabal (The Blue Cafta, Tel Aviv On Fire) presides over the Une Autre Voix collective which also features French actress and director Julie Gayet and screenwriter Baya Kasmi as well as Lebanese-Canadian dramatist Wajdi Mouawad (Incendies) among his racks.

Further signatories of the letter include Mona Achache, Sofia Alaoui, Jeanne Balibar, Emmanuelle Bercot, Sami Bouajila, Laure Calamy, François Cluzet, Abdel Raouf Dafri, Grégory Gadebois, Michel Hazanavicious, Tewfik Jallab, Olga Kurylenko, Alexandra Lamy, Fabrice de La Patelliere, Mélanie Laurent, Charlotte le Bon, Virginie Ledoyen, Claude Lelouch, Jalil Lespert, Kad Merad and Elsa Zylberstein to name but a few.

The march will fall six weeks after deadly Hamas terror attacks on Southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in more than 240 people being taken hostage and taken to the Gaza Strip.

Since then, an Israeli military campaign on Gaza, aimed at wiping out Hamas and getting the hostages back, has killed more than 11,500 people, according to figures from the Hamas-run health authority, and displaced 70% of the 2.3 million population.

“Two peoples have been taken hostage by policies that we cannot master, which exceed our understanding and of which we are powerless witnesses,” read the open letter.

Over the course of last weekend, Paris played host to two protests sparked by the conflict, the first on Saturday called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the second was against anti-Semitism in response to a surge in anti-Semitic acts across France since October 7.

“An immense wave of hatred is gradually settling and every day anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts and violence of all kinds arise in our lives. The words ‘choice’ and ‘clan’ are imposed on us: ‘Choose your clan!’,” commented the open letter.

“But when death strikes, we do not cry or rejoice according to our place of birth. We remain silent, we pray, we cry with our loved ones, we have compassion, we are human. To this mandate to choose a camp to hate, it is urgent to make another voice heard: A voice of union,” it continued.

The march is due to kick off at 2pm CET on Sunday from the Institut du Monde Arabe on the Paris Left Bank.

Read the open letter and list of signatories here

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