On Wednesday, Miami Beach Mayor Steve Meiner plans to present an item to the city commission that could result in the eviction of the small nonprofit movie theater O Cinema from a city-owned venue.
The reason? The organization showed Oscar-winning film No Other Land, a documentary that looks at Palestinians forced out of homes in the West Bank. The mayor has personally objected to the film, calling it antisemitic.
His proposal to evict O Cinema has turned into a major freedom of speech controversy, receiving international media attention. A group of more than 600 artists — including Miami native award-winning filmmakers Barry Jenkins and Phil Lord — have signed an open letter to the mayor denouncing the effort as an act of government censorship.
“O Cinema has a long history of supporting important and diverse viewpoints that foster dialogue. We as filmmakers invite critical discussion of any film, but your decision to punish O Cinema for screening No Other Land is an attack on freedom of expression, the right of artists to tell their stories and a violation of the First Amendment,” reads the letter.
“It is also an offense to the people of Miami Beach, and Greater Miami as a whole, who deserve to have access to a diverse range of films and perspectives.”
“It starts with O Cinema, this little indie theater. Next day, it's a playwright presenting a play. Or a musician performing. Or a visual artist.” O Cinema co-founder Kareem Tabsch
The Independent Documentary Association and the independent theater coalition Art House Convergence have issued public statements condemning the effort as an act of government censorship. Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the Florida Muslim Bar Association have condemned the effort.
In a statement, Mayor Meiner called the film — directed by an Israeli and Palestinian film collaborative — “antisemitic propaganda” and said that a city-owned space should not have shown it.
“It is important to work with organizations that reject any form of hatred, including against the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” said Meiner.
The film documents the destruction of several Palestinian villages in the Israeli-military occupied West Bank after a court order declared the area a special military zone. There are scenes of extreme violence in the film, including of an Israeli soldier and a Jewish settler shooting Palestinian residents who protested their displacement. The film was shot between 2019 and late 2023.
'Canary in the coal mine'
Kareem Tabsch, a filmmaker and co-founder of O Cinema, told WLRN that he fears the attempt to evict O Cinema from the city-owned space and cut the organization off from any government funds is a “canary in the coal mine” that could send a damaging message to the rest of the world about Miami Beach.
The city is in the middle of trying to very publicly rebrand itself from a hard partying vacation destination to an international arts and culture destination. But now, the headline being seen around the world is that Miami Beach could seek to punish venues that show disfavored viewpoints, he said.
“It starts with O Cinema, this little indie theater with 69 seats on Washington Avenue. Next day, it's a playwright presenting a play. Or a musician performing. Or a visual artist,” said Tabsch. “If you start censoring movies at the indie movie theater, when do you start censoring the art that’s on the walls?”
The city is host to Art Basel Miami Beach, the single largest artist fair in the US. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come every December to see art at the fair and other satellite fairs.
“I guarantee you that folks are not gonna want to celebrate or support a city that exercises censorship of its citizenry,” said Tabsch.
READ MORE: Miami Beach mayor seeks to evict theater over 'antisemitic' Oscar-winning documentary
All of the showings of No Other Land were sold out, said Tabsch. No one showed up to protest it, although some people did submit comments that they disagreed with some parts of it.
“We got a few comments from folks who objected to the film, as is customary for many of the films we show, and which I think is healthy in a democracy,” said Tabsch.
The controversy is reminiscent of an episode in 1991 in which the City of Miami commission sought to end the lease of a museum that showed art by artists who still lived in Communist Cuba. This offended the city’s commissioners, prompting the attempt to evict the museum. A federal lawsuit argued that the city was engaging in censorship, a violation of the First Amendment.
The court agreed that the city was engaging in censorship. In an opinion, the court wrote: "Such conduct seeks the type of intolerant governmental behavior that the opponents of the Cuban Museum so rightly oppose in the first instance."
Decision 'should not be tolerated'
O Cinema has had a presence in Miami Beach since 2014, when the independent nonprofit arthouse cinema first rented the Byron Carlyle Theater in North Beach, another city-owned space. It has operated at the historic old City Hall building on Washington Avenue, which also houses the Miami Beach District Court, since 2019.
Originally, Mayor Meiner asked the organization not to show the film when he caught wind that it was on the calendar, arguing that it was one-sided propaganda.
O Cinema originally agreed not to show it, but quickly reversed course when the nonprofit saw implications on government censorship, said Tabsch. Besides, the audience had been asking to see it, he added. The management of O Cinema had been tracking the film since it won a top award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. Since then, the film has generated nearly universal critical acclaim: The critic aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% rating, an extreme rarity for any film.
In his public statement, Mayor Meiner equated the film with hate speech and Nazi Germany.
“Hate under the banner of ‘culture’ is still hate; perhaps even more dangerously so,” wrote Meiner. “Nazi Germany used its advanced culture to disseminate and mainstream Jew hatred culminating in mass murder.”
The decision of O Cinema to show the film “should not be tolerated,” Meiner wrote in the statement. If the city succeeds in evicting the theater from the space, it will seek out a different partner that “better aligns with our community values,” he wrote.
For his part, Tabsch says he is taken aback with the insinuation that he or O Cinema is antisemitic for choosing to show No Other Land.
“Hate under the banner of ‘culture’ is still hate; perhaps even more dangerously so." Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner
As a filmmaker, Tabsch directed The Last Resort in 2018, a love letter documentary about how Jewish-Americans, many of whom survived the Holocaust, turned Miami Beach into the modern thriving city that it is today. That film won a top award at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, an event actually hosted by O Cinema.
“I think that all we have done over these many many years and the close collaborations and relationships we have speaks to O Cinema’s values and principles,” said Tabsch.
This is not the first time O Cinema has potentially faced displacement from powers beyond its control. The group has been fundraising to try to come up with enough money to own its own space in Little River, something it has been pushing for after being displaced from their original location by an apartment building development in Wynwood in 2019.
“This situation has reminded us that when you are at the whim of other entities, be them private developers or local government, things like this can come up,” said Tabsch.
The arts desperately need government funding in order to thrive, said Tabsht, and for a long time Miami Beach has been an exemplary government in that sense.
“But it has made some missteps along the way," said Tabsch. "I think this is a major misstep.”
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