Gaza Cinema Academy Launches at Venice Film Festival
A new film school for the Gaza Strip was announced at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, September 7, 2026. The Gaza Cinema Academy, co-founded by Palestinian filmmakers Ezzaldeen Shalh and Mai Masri, aims to establish a permanent space for film education, training and production in Gaza. Deadline
The launch was accompanied by a short film showing Shalh in a classroom with aspiring female filmmakers — a glimpse of work already underway on the ground. Shalh is a Gaza-based director and film academic whose credits include The Dry Spring, The Other World and Love and Bread, and who founded the Gaza International Women's Film Festival. Masri is a pioneer of Palestinian cinema, best known for her 2015 feature 3000 Nights, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The Academy is the next step in a process that began in 2024 with the development of the Gaza Filmmaking Diploma, a nine-month theoretical and practical training programme. That diploma welcomed its first intake of 25 young Palestinian women in March 2026. The Academy is now developing a full filmmaking degree accredited by Al-Quds Open University.
The project has drawn support from across the Arab film world and beyond. Palestinian filmmakers Annemarie Jacir, Hiam Abbass and Saleh Bakri have backed the Academy, along with Egyptian comedian and filmmaker Ramy Youssef. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania — in Venice as a 2026 jury member and director of The Voice of Hind Rajab — has also lent her support, as have Italian producer Graziella Bildesheim and Alaa Karkouti, co-founder of Cairo-based distribution and sales company Mad Solutions. Variety reported the launch as a collective effort by prominent Palestinian, Arab and international industry figures.
Shalh used the Venice platform to invite film and cultural institutions, festivals, film funds, production companies and filmmakers worldwide to build partnerships with the Academy.
The launch landed at a festival where Palestinian cinema had a visible presence. Ahmed Hassouna's Citizen Osama was one of two Palestinian films screened at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, according to Variety. The Academy's announcement, made on the same Lido, placed questions of access to film training and infrastructure in Gaza squarely in front of the international industry.
Separately, Susan Sarandon told Variety in comments published September 6, 2026, that she had had movies taken away from her recently over her support for Palestine. Variety Those remarks circulated alongside the Academy launch, though the two stories are distinct.
For the international film community, the Academy's appearance at Venice is an open invitation — to fund, to partner, to send equipment and instructors — from a place where building a film industry means building the institutions from the ground up.
