Mayor Drops Proposal to Evict Cinema

UPDATE Mar 19, 2025 5:02 PM CDT

Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner has dropped a proposal to evict an independent film cinema for showing Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. The Miami Herald reports that the vast majority of attendees—and five out of six city commissioners—opposed the mayor's proposal at a "raucous" city commission meeting Wednesday. Meiner called for canceling O Cinema's lease and pulling funding after it showed the documentary on the destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank. He said Wednesday that he would withdraw the proposal and support an alternative proposal to encourage the cinema to "highlight a fair and balanced viewpoint."

Mar 14, 2025 6:59 AM CDT

The mayor of Miami Beach is trying to evict an independent film cinema for showing the winner of this year's Oscar for best documentary feature film. Mayor Steven Meiner says No Other Land, which looks at the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, is a "false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people" that is not consistent with the city's values, the Guardian reports. He has proposed canceling O Cinema's lease and withdrawing $40,000 in funding for the art house cinema. Free-speech advocates have promised to fight the move, which city commissioners will vote on next week.

"If the First Amendment doesn't mean that a movie theater can show an Oscar-winning film, something is seriously wrong," says Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. O Cinema CEO Vivian Marthel initially agreed not to show the film, citing concerns of antisemitic rhetoric, but she later changed course, Axios reports. She said it was "not a declaration of political alignment" but a "bold reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard, even, and perhaps especially, when it challenges us."

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City commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez said Wednesday that she agrees with Meiner's assessment of the film but she is against his proposals, the Miami Herald reports. She cited the cinema's "longstanding commitment to the Jewish community"—and the risk of "costly legal battles." The movie also looks at the unlikely friendship between two of its directors, Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, the Herald reports. "We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger," Abraham said in his acceptance speech at the Oscars." He tells the Guardian: "Banning a film only makes people more determined to see it." (More movie theaters stories.)