The last bastion of liberal Zionism in Aotearoa
Why are people still giving DocEdge the benefit of the doubt?
Ethnostates only do this when they’re very distressed
As Israel’s genocidal flailing escalates to an exchange of missiles with Iran, it has never been harder to imagine a future where it is able to continue in its current form. One can’t help but be reminded of the last days of another apartheid regime. As writer Vincent Bevins reflected last year:
Just like the South Africa of 40 years ago, Israel is a pariah. The overwhelming majority of people around the world are sickened by the unspeakable horrors that have been inflicted on the Palestinian people since 7 October 2023. Even those that ignored the violence prior to this date are finding the cognitive dissonance increasingly untenable. The exceptions to this are few but powerful. They include the governments of the world’s rich, white and English-speaking countries and their mouthpieces in the media.
But there is one striking difference between our current moment and its most clear antecedent. Unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel can count among its supporters a significant number of New Zealand filmmakers. Why?
What is DocEdge?
DocEdge is a Zionist film festival operating under the cover of plausible deniability. Founded by Israeli Dan Shanan in 2005, it initially received funding from the (now closed) Israeli Embassy but removed it from the partners page in 2022. Despite this, its underlying philosophy has remained consistent both in terms of programming decisions and its weirdly defensive Values and Principles.
During its two decades of operation, DocEdge has been subjected to a number of protests. In 2018, the festival was criticised for screening a documentary glorifying former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. In 2022, it was formally boycotted for its Israeli funding (with some New Zealand filmmakers crossing the picket-line), leading to the removal of embassy sponsorship. Last year, it screened the pro-genocide documentary We Will Dance Again with attendees spitting at peaceful protestors outside the Roxy Cinema1. Now DocEdge is preparing to screen another Israeli film using the events of 7 October to justify the Gaza genocide.
Of the two Israeli docos in its 2025 programme (there are no Palestinian films playing), the more egregious is A Letter to David. This film plays up the victimhood of an Israeli man kidnapped on 7 October to play into bad-faith rhetoric about “freeing the hostages” and treat the genocidal violence that has unfolded since then as morally justified. In this way, it treads a lot of the same ground as We Will Dance Again but adds identical twins like a soap opera running out of ideas.2 As fewer and fewer people are letting themselves be fooled by Israeli Hasbara3, the country is still trying to draw water from an almost-dry well.
The conservatism of the New Zealand film industry
I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt to all the New Zealand filmmakers whose work is screening in DocEdge and assume that none of them really knew what they signed up for. If you know any of them, I’d encourage you to contact them and request they pull their films. However, I have to say that the New Zealand film industry is vastly different to the one that created Patu!
I’ve previously praised Merata Mita’s 1983 film and a large part of its success was the way in which she was able to draw upon the work of other New Zealand filmmakers. Gaylene Preston, Alun Bollinger, Roger Donaldson and Russell Campbell all helped as either coordinators or camera operators. Patu! was a true team effort that was a masterpiece because of how many of Mita’s peers shared her anti-racist politics.
But something changed in the industry in the 21st Century. Peter Jackson may claim to be apolitical but the Nazi memorabilia enthusiast has certainly made his mark on politics. His massive property portfolio and 2019 purchase of the Wellington mayoralty would be significant enough but his biggest contribution to New Zealand is the ‘Hobbit law’. For Jackson to be able to make his dogshit Hobbit movies in New Zealand, John Key’s government needed to change the law in a way that completely undermined workers’ rights. This made New Zealand a comparatively attractive place to make movies (especially when unions are still relatively strong in Hollywood) which has attracted international productions and contributed to a situation where profits are emphasised at the expense of both workers and local stories. Now, the people attracted to the film industry are more likely to be conservative, ‘apolitical’ (i.e. conservative) or overworked to the extent that they are unable to participate in politics.
It’s no coincidence that the most successful New Zealand filmmaker since Jackson is Taika Waititi. Backtracking on his previous plea that New Zealanders should ‘give nothing to racism’, the director has since joined Team Racism through his pro-Israel stance. In 2023, Waititi signed an open letter to Joe Biden, encouraging the President to support Israel in the escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
There are still excellent films coming out of Aotearoa but these are made in spite of their material conditions. Figures like Jackson and Waititi have so thoroughly contributed to a depoliticisation within the industry that even supposedly anti-racist films bumble into Turkish nationalism.
This is the environment in which DocEdge is able to thrive. It’s not that our filmmakers and institutions necessarily share its Zionist politics (with exceptions like Waititi and Botes), it’s that the industry has been completely hollowed out. In the past, filmmakers would have had the space to develop a reasoned political perspective and a union in which to find solidarity with other workers. Now they’re lucky if they find funding for their film or a festival in which to screen it. I don’t know if a figure like Merata Mita could emerge from our current film industry. Maybe she managed to find a job in the sector but is forced to work 20 hour days for James Cameron. Maybe she got her film made but had to water down its politics to receive Film Commission funding. Maybe she just didn’t see a future in film at all.
One way you can contribute to a better industry is by boycotting DocEdge and letting others, especially filmmakers, know that it isn’t some kind of arbiter of objective truth.
If you’re looking for anti-Zionist programming, then please come along to the Queer Cinema for Palestine programme screening this Thursday at Massey University. Tickets are free (donations are encouraged) and available here.
The parallels between this and a certain scene in Patu! are unmistakeable
It’s a wonder that October H8te didn’t make it into the lineup
It’s notable that 2025 films featuring Israeli ‘actors’, Captain America: Brave New World and Snow White underperformed