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Chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” Melissa Barrera joined almost pro-Palestinian protestors today at the Sundance Film Festival.
Marching halfway up Park City’s Main Street in the snow, the protesters were under heavy police surveillance and swarmed by media. With the huge media spotlight that Sundance attracts every year, capturing the attention of cameras and reporters were clearly part of the purpose of the demo Sunday.
Passersby at the festival were heard yelling “Bring them home” at the protestors in reference to hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas the past three months.
At Sundance for the genre film Your Monsters, Barrera has been outspoken in her support of Palestine and a ceasefire in the Gaza War that erupted soon after Hamas murderous and sexual assault filled attack on communities and military bases near the border with the Jewish state.
Barrera’s pro-Palestinian support on social saw her get fired by Spyglass Media from Scream VII back in Novemberas the studio considered her remarks to be anti-semitic. She broke her silence days later on social exclaiming, ““First and foremost I condemn Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people,” Barrera said in a statement shared on Instagram Stories.
Today Barrera told Deadline she was “not doing any interviews, but you are welcome to take video of me.” Later, hanging back from the banners at the front of the marchers, Barrera recited with the crowd: “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians!”
The Let Gaza Live protest has been in planning for weeks. Protestors boarded buses at Kimball Junction Station, seven miles from Main Street, before touching down at the main bus depot near Swede Alley.
The larger rally today was preceded by 25 Pro-Palestinian attendees earlier this morning with a small group gathering yesterday, Film workers for Palestine, just off Park City’s Main Street. That vigil yesterday saw organizers read off a list of names “whose stories ended in martyrdom,” as well as Angel of Gaza documentary director Ahmed Mansour speaking
Posting earlier this week on social, the Let Gaza Live event wrote “While bombs are dropping, the people cannot continue watching films on their screens while ignoring a genocide in Gaza.”
“While we do not take issue with Sundance as a whole, we aim to let spectators and news reporters know that Utah stands with Palestine,” the group Palestinian Solidarity UT added. The organizers are not affiliated with the overall Sundance Film Festival.
Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. More than 1400 were left dead from the brutal siege as detailed evidence shows wide-spread rapes and hundreds of people, including children, taken hostage. Within hours, Israel struck back by bombing potential Hamas strongholds. Within weeks, hundreds of thousands IDF troops crossed the border into Gaza territory. As Hamas have gone to ground, Gaza has been decimated and most of the population dislocated.
Politics mixing with cinemas is de rigueur at Sundance. There were two back-to-back women’s marches in 2017 and 2018 in response to the Donald Trump presidency; the latter Respect Rally attended then by Jane Fonda, Gloria Allred and Thor actress Tessa Thompson. The 2017 March on Main counted 8,000 strong, while the 2018 rally drew 400 people in the middle of a fierce snowstorm at the time.
