Peaceful demonstration at Locarno Film Festival honors 60,000 Gaza victims

At the Locarno Film Festival, roughly a hundred demonstrators displayed a banner bearing the names of 60,000 people killed in Gaza since the conflict began two and a half years ago. The event was organized by Swiss Healthcare Workers Against Genocide and was coordinated in advance with festival management and police, ensuring it did not interfere with the program. The same banner had earlier appeared in Amsterdam and outside the Swiss Parliament in Bern.

Participants distributed literature urging the Swiss government to push Israel to allow humanitarian access and to consider sanctions if Geneva Convention breaches continue. The festival, which includes works by Palestinian filmmakers, remained largely free of the political controversy that affected other festivals earlier this year. After the protest, over 8,000 attendees gathered for a sold-out screening of Olivia Wilde’s "The Invite."