NOTE: This story has been updated to include a response from the IDA.
The action group Pens for Swords has launched a letter-writing campaign to protest the International Documentary Association’s decision to cancel the advertising contract it had with the film “We Will Dance Again,” charging that the move shows “anti-Israeli discrimination” and is “effectively sabotaging the documentary film’s Academy Awards chances.”
Pens for Swords, an action group that focuses on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, also appealed to the California State Attorney General and the Los Angeles County District Attorney, asking for an inquiry into the IDA’s actions and to reconsider the organization’s nonprofit status.
Representatives for the film have rejected the arguments made by an attorney for the IDA last week in a Dec. 4 letter to the filmmakers and to TheWrap that characterized the claims of anti-Israeli bias as “fictional.” That letter and the IDA’s arguments, said a spokesperson for the film, are “defamatory actions.”
TheWrap reached out to the IDA and to the law firm of Singh, Singh & Trauben, LLP, which wrote the letter defending the IDA. Two days after the post went up, a spokesperson responded by disputing the characterization of the filmmakers’ agreement with the IDA as a contract, and the description of an Instagram post in the Pens for Swords letter. Details below.
“We Will Dance Again,” which was nominated by the Producers Guild of America on Tuesday in its documentary category and is currently playing on Paramount+, deals with the 2023 Nova Music Festival, at which more than 380 people were killed as part of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
The filmmakers signed an insertion order with the IDA on Nov. 15 to have the organization send seven email blasts (called “eBlasts” in the order) and one “weekly digest” ad to its members between Nov. 18 and Dec. 8, leading up to the Dec. 9-13 voting for the Academy Award shortlist in the Best Documentary Feature category.
That order set a price of slightly more than $18,000 for the eBlasts and weekly digest ad. A Nov. 13 email from the IDA said that a requested pop-up banner was not available and offered a different banner instead, setting a new price of $17,040.
After the first eBlast went out, the IDA canceled the rest of the order, saying that it had limited inventory for the blasts and had to give priority to films that were nominated for the IDA Documentary Award. (“We Will Dance Again” was not submitted for that award.) The IDA had yet to send an invoice for the order, so no payment had been made and the filmmakers were not charged for the initial eBlast.
According to the letter sent by Pens for Swords (and available for others to sign and send here), that cancellation seriously damaged the film’s awards prospects by withholding the ads from potential Oscar voters.
The Academy’s Documentary Branch consists of about 700 voting members around the world, but it is unknown exactly how many of them are also members of the IDA. The IDA’s website says that it has more than 3,000 members, with documentary filmmakers and doc fans eligible to join under seven different levels of membership, from “Doc Lover Membership” at $55 to “Advocate Membership” at $5,000.
The letter from Pens for Swords asks the IDA (which it initially misidentifies as the Independent Documentary Association rather than the International Documentary Association) to reverse course and honor what it terms a “media distribution contract” with “We Will Dance Again” “before causing more irreparable harm” — although with shortlist voting ending on Dec. 13, there’s little time to fulfill a contract calling for more than half a dozen items.
A spokesperson for the IDA disputes the description of the agreement as a contract or an ad buy, saying that it is governed by insertion order terms that allow for cancellations. “There was no enforceable or formal contract at issue here,” said a statement from the spokesperson. “There was a conditional reservation for potential eBlasts. One of those eBlasts was conducted, the others were not for clear business reasons, which IDA at all times had the right to do (IDA always reserves the right to cancel a conditional reservation).”
It goes on to say, “[T]he IDA has purposely breached a media distribution contract with the producers of ‘We Will Dance Again’ … We are forwarding this letter to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and the Office of the Attorney General of California because the IDA’s anti-Israel discrimination likely violates California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.[2] In addition, under California law, as a nonprofit, the IDA is considered a public accommodation,’ so we recommend that IDA’s nonprofit status be reconsidered should allegations of discriminatory behavior be confirmed.”
The letter, and representatives for “We Will Dance Again,” also addressed specific comments made by the IDA’s attorneys in their Dec. 4 communication, which said that the film’s complaints “reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of IDA’s advertising insertion order process.” The attorneys said that at least 12 other films were also rejected for eBlasts and marketing – but according to Pens for Swords, those other films were simply inquiries from movies that did not have existing contracts, making “We Will Dance Again” the only film whose contract was canceled.
“Furthermore,” the letter said, “the claim that IDA has a limited ‘inventory’ for email blasts is implausible in the digital era. The eBlast that the producers paid $21,000 for is literally a click of a button for the IDA.”
The IDA spokesperson responded to that claim with this: “The concept of ‘limited inventory’ is a real one, in that as a matter of business practice, anything more than two eBlasts a day results in subscriber cancellations and in general is counter-productive. The concept of ‘limited inventory’ is hence not a technical limitation.”
While the IDA said it offered replacement email blasts that would take place after voting had closed for the IDA Documentary Awards, spokespersons for the film say concrete replacements were never offered and that the IDA was “non-responsive during the entire controversy” until TheWrap approached them for comment last week.
In the Pens for Swords letter, the IDA specifically disputes its use of the word contract and its description of a post it said was made on the IDA’s Instagram account. Initially, the spokesperson said the post was made on IDA communications head Zaferhan Yumru’s personal account, but that was later amended to say that it never appeared on his account at all. (His account, @zafzaftv, is now private.)
The IDA also pointed out the Pens for Swords letter’s incorrect characterization of the monetary exchange between the organization and the filmmakers. “IDA never charged any money to the filmmakers and the filmmakers never paid any money to IDA, and IDA seeks no payment from the filmmakers,” its statement read. “Any statement or implication to the contrary in the publication is false and must be corrected.”
Here is the Pens for Swords letter:
To IDA Leadership, District Attorney Nathan Hochman, and Attorney General Rob Bonta,
We are writing to you as concerned members of the community, unaffiliated with the filmmakers and producers of the documentary We Will Dance Again. The mission of the Independent [SIC] Documentary Association (IDA) is to “support the vital work of documentary storytellers and champion a thriving and inclusive documentary culture.”[1] Contrary to this mission, it has come to our attention that, for reasons of anti-Israel discrimination, the IDA has purposely breached a media distribution contract with the producers of We Will Dance Again, effectively sabotaging the documentary film’s Academy Award prospects. We are forwarding this letter to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and the Office of the Attorney General of California because the IDA’s anti-Israel discrimination likely violates California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.[2] In addition, under California law, as a non-profit, the IDA is considered a “public accommodation,” so we recommend that IDA’s non-profit status be reconsidered should allegations of discriminatory behavior be confirmed.[3] But there is still time to change course! We urge the IDA to dispel its bigotry and immediately honor its media contract with We Will Dance Again before causing more irreparable harm.
Although the IDA calls these charges of anti-Israel bias a “fiction,”[4] the evidence paints a much different picture. The producers of We Will Dance Again signed a contract with the IDA for $21,000 for an “eBlast” of media distribution on November 18, 2024. On November 15, 2024, IDA personnel confirmed the timeline for the eBlast and requested final materials for media distribution. However, when the media campaign came across the desk of Zaferhan Yumru, IDA’s director of marketing, the producers of the film suddenly received a form letter of cancellation.
It has come to light that Zaferhan Yumru has a long history of anti-Israel activism and rhetoric online.[5][6][7] We Will Dance Again is a film that documents the minute-by-minute events that occurred at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, when Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, slaughtered, raped, tortured, and burned alive 380 festival attendees.[8] It appears that Zaferhan Yumru’s cancellation of the media distribution contract was motivated by anti-Israel animus, aiming to silence the important humanitarian message at the heart of the film and sabotage the prospects of it garnering an Academy Award nomination.
IDA’s contention that the cancellation was a simple clerical misunderstanding does not hold water. Canceling an existing contract to accommodate other “priorities”[4] clearly reflects “deprioritizing” a film it does not want to promote due to personal and institutional discrimination. Furthermore, the claim that IDA has a limited “inventory” for email blasts is implausible in the digital era. The eBlast that the producers paid $21,000 for is literally a click of a button for the IDA. IDA also asserts that rejecting 12 other films proves there was no discrimination. However, the other films did not have existing contracts. Only the We Will Dance Again contract was canceled.
This is not an isolated incident. The filmmakers and producers of We Will Dance Again reached out to other documentary filmmakers of Jewish and Israel-focused films and discovered numerous examples of similar treatment by Zaferhan Yumru and the IDA, establishing a pattern of discriminatory behavior. The keynote speaker at IDA’s 2024 Getting Real conference was Jemma Desai,[9] a fervent anti-Israel activist who frequently posts “Fuck Israel” and red Hamas triangles on social media. On October 9, 2023, just two days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and before Israel entered Gaza, Desai organized a protest in solidarity with the perpetrators.[10] Further evidence of IDA’s anti-Israel stance occurred at Thursday night’s awards ceremony, where IDA granted three prestigious awards to anti-Israel documentaries. No documentaries with pro-Israel or neutral perspectives received nominations.[11] In celebration of one of the anti-Israel documentaries’ wins, Zaferhan Yumru posted “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free Free Free” on the official IDA Instagram account.[7]
We strongly urge the IDA to cease its discriminatory behavior and uphold its mission of inclusivity. To avoid further civil rights violations and jeopardizing its non-profit status, IDA must immediately honor its media distribution contract with the producers of We Will Dance Again.
Sources:
1. https://www.documentary.org/about-us
2. https://www.dor.ca.gov/Home/UnruhCivilRightsAct
3. https://calcivilrights.ca.gov/unruh/
4. https://archive.ph/k4EgU
5. https://www.threads.net/@sharonwaxman/post/DDM8dQ_vH5N
6. https://www.instagram.com/idaorg/profilecard/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
7. https://www.instagram.com/zafzaftv?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
8. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/world/middleeast/october-7-nova-festival-victims.html
9. https://www.documentary.org/gettingreal24/program
10. https://x.com/jemjemdesi?s=11&t=bbqtlYKX-m-II_8AaiWtUg
11. https://www.documentary.org/awards2024
