Jornal da Mostra
Nº 319 > 28ª Mostra > 03/11/2004
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Grief at the Festival - The filmmaker Theo Van Gogh is murdered in Holland
The director had been receiving murder threats since the release of his film on women and IslamThe Dutch filmmaker, chronicler and writer Theo Van Gogh, 47, responsible for several controversial films, among them the short-film Submission (2004), about women and Islam, was murdered last Tuesday in Amsterdam. The supposed killer, a 26-year-old man with double Dutch and Moroccan nationality, was held prisoner.
The director, who signed the segment Euroquiz in the Visions of Europe project, shown in the 28th São Paulo International Film Festival, was stabbed after being shot while riding on his bike in a street in Amsterdam. Speculations have been made about the motives of the crime. It has been said that he was killed due to his heavy criticism on Islam, but officially, the authorities deny it and are avoiding making any comments on the subject.
Van Gogh’s murder by an alleged Islamic extremist has shaken the traditional tolerance in the core of Dutch society. The newspaper Christian Trouw stated in their editorial that “this murder might be the beginning of a spiral, in which several communities might become enemies”.
Directing over 20 films, some of them shown in former editions of the Festival like Loos (1989, 13º Edition), 06 (1994, 20º Edition) and Blind Date (1996, 21º Edition), the filmmaker was finishing a production on the murder of the populist right wing leader Pim Fortuyn, killed in 2002.
Accusations and threats
The short Submission, about the Koran and the submission of the women, was based on a script by the parliamentary liberal originally Somali Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who fights against the Islamic abuses against women. The film showed four women with see-though dresses. Beneath those, their bodies had been scribbled upon with parts of the Koran that described the horrible things they had been submitted to. After the film was shown on national TV in Holland, Van Gogh started receiving death threats.
