The open letter comes from the Venice4Palestine collective that took similar initiative last year, albeit with specific requests, urging organizers to withdraw invitations to Gerard Butler and Gal Gadot over previous support for Israel.

The Venice4Palestine letter also calls for the Palestinian flag to be flown throughout the festival to underline the presence in the event’s official selection of two Palestinian films: Ahmed Hassouna’s “Citizen Osama,” which portrays a photographer as he attempts to juggle his roles as father and a journalist while capturing the realities of war in Gaza, and Muayad Alayan’s “Conversation with the Sea,” about a 60-year-old Palestinian man named Kamal who becomes entangled in a tendentious web of Israeli bureaucracy.

Venice has never shied away from political controversy, or from films that put the plight of Palestinians on screen.

NAZA, a new hot-button documentary from “No Other Land” directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, was added late to the Venice competition lineup.

The docu, which was shot at night on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, shows “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” according to its synopsis.

Signatories of the Venice4Palestine letter also include Nan Goldin, Paul Laverty, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Saleh Bakri and Céline Sciamma as well as Italy’s Anna Foglietta, Fabrizio Gifuni, Greta Scarano, Jasmine Trinca and Luigi Lo Cascio.

Panel: And Yet Gaza Continues to Burn 

The collective also announced the panel “And Yet Gaza Continues to Burn – What Is the Point of Seeing if We Do Not Act?,” which takes place under aegis of the fest’s separately run section Giornate degli Autori, aka Venice Days.

The panel on Sept. 8 will gather international law experts as well as representatives of the Global Sumud Flotilla group, which has tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea.

The 83rd Venice Film Fest runs from Sept. 2 to 12.