What happened during the closing ceremony of the Chéris-Chéries film festival last Wednesday at the MK2 Bibliothèque in the 13th arrondissement of Paris? The LGBTQIA + event, whose mission is to reward the diversity of representations of minorities in cinema, is today at the heart of a scandal after the publication of an Instagram post from one of the members of the Jury.
Julia Layani, podcaster and jury member for the short film competition, published an Instagram post on Thursday in which she accused other jury members of anti-Semitism. She explains that she wanted to join the signatories of a forum to condemn the atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran by asking that a mention be added to the Israeli hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023 and still detained in Gaza. The signatories would have refused and excluded Julia Layani from their speech. Despite everything, she took the stage during the closing ceremony of the Festival to add her point of view, specifying that she had experienced “something extremely violent behind the scenes”. In her Instagram post, the Jewish podcast host claims that this revolt follows the intervention of Caroline Fourest in one of her programs, who has “controversial” positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following these accusations, the MK2 group which organizes the festival gave its support to Julia Layani by explaining in a press release “We strongly reaffirm our commitment to a festival respectful of all, whatever their origins, beliefs or opinions” . However, the incident has already had a very concrete consequence since the first vice-president of the Île-de-France region, Florence Mosalini Portelli, decided to suspend the 20,000 euros in subsidies from Chéries-Chéris, at the request of Valérie Pécresse according to The Parisian.
France
