Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bollywood Director Mira Nair Joins Culture Boycott of Israel

Award-winning Indian director Mira Nair has turned down an invitation to be guest of honor at the Haifa Film Festival for political reasons, posting on her Twitter page that she would not visit Israel until “Apartheid is over.”

“I will not be going to Israel at this time,” she tweeted last Friday in the second of five tweets on the subject of Israel. The first tweet announced that she had been invited to the film festival as guest of honor. “I will go to Israel when the walls come down. I will go to Israel when occupation is gone.”

By declining the offer, Nair joins a long line of artists and intellectuals – including the Pixies, Roger Waters, Elvis Costello, Alice Walker and Stephen Hawking – who have boycotted Israel in recent years in protest over the government’s policy toward the Palestinians. The Haifa Film Festival, which opens September 19, will run for ten days. Festival officials wanted to screen Nair’s latest film, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2012.

Nair tweeted three additional messages on Friday. “I will go to Israel when the state does not privilege one religion over another. I will go to Israel when Apartheid is over,” she wrote. Then she added, “I will go to Israel, soon.”

For more go to Haaretz

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.