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The Edinburgh Film Festival uncharacteristically found itself at the centre of a political storm weeks before the 2009 festival was due to begin when it accepted a £300 grant from the Israeli Embassy to enable Tel Aviv university graduate Tali Shalom-Ezer to travel to the festival for the screening of her non-political film Surrogate.   The gesture from the Israeli embassy caused a storm of protest from various members of the film-making community, one of the most vocal of whom was British director Ken Loach who was at the Cannes Film Festival to promote his own film, Looking for Eric, when the storm broke.

Loach, who strongly opposed Israel’s military action in Lebanon and Gaza urged filmgoers to boycott the festival unless the money was returned.   ‘The massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make this money unacceptable,’ he said.

His outrage prompted a response from Jeremy Isaacs, former head of British TV station Channel 4, to comment in a report in the London Times, who said, ‘Ken Loach has always been critical of censorship of his own work, albeit it was many years in the past. The idea that he should lend himself to the denial of a film-maker's right to show her work is absolutely appalling… It must be good for cinemagoers at an international film festival to see films by Jews, Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, to the benefit of all.’

Festival organisers quickly responded to the protests by returning the money received from the Israeli Embassy and paying for Shalom-Ezer’s travel expenses themselves.

EIFF managing director Ginnie Atkinson remarked: ‘The Edinburgh International Film Festival is well known for bringing together people from all over the world, regardless of race or religion, to screen and appreciate films for their own sake, and we look forward to continuing this important mission.’

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