Boycotting Mubi, finding an alternative film platform, supporting the actors who stand up for Palestine
28 August 2026
A week ago Niki Orfanou and I cancelled what turned out to be a short-lived subscription to Mubi. Before Mubi I’d cancelled subscriptions to Amazon, Disney, Netflix and also the mandatory licence fee that has to be paid to the BBC just to watch TV (not even the BBC). I did this because of their complicity with Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Along the way I found that peeling off these layers of corporate strangulation made me feel freer in general. Mubi seemed like the obvious place to head because it had developed this reputation for supporting independent cinema. But then we belatedly discovered that Mubi is complicit as well—goodbye Mubi.
Mubi accepted a $100 million investment from Sequoia Capital in June 2025. Sequoia Capital operates a venture capital fund in Israel, actively invests in Israel’s technology sector, which is dripping with the blood of genocide, and its leadership has been vocal in its support for Israel, especially since 7/10. In October 2025 Sequoia closed a $200 million seed fund that saw 20% go to Israeli start-ups. Beneficiaries include Kela (a defence-tech company), Corma (a cyber-security company) and Decart (an AI start-up founded by Israeli intelligence veterans already worth $3 billion).
Mubi as a cool arthouse cinema platform: fuck me, fuck you.
The campaign to boycott Mubi began after it acquired The Substance and saw the film receive five Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, in January 2025. A tweet by @atlajala in June 2025 brought attention to the Sequoia investment. A letter authored by the Film Workers for Palestine made three demands: that Mubi publicly condemn Sequoia Capital for “genocide profiteering”, remove Sequoia investors from its board of directors and introduce an ethics policy for future investments. Mubi responded with some fire-fighting gestures but maintained its ties with Sequoia.
BDS, which supports the boycott, reports that the boycott campaign has led Mubi to lose 200,000 subscribers. Make that 200,001.
With no Mubi to slump to, we decided to subscribe to Curzon. I checked: back in 2015 it was one of several cinemas that hosted the Seret International Film Festival, which showcased Israeli films and was co-sponsored by the Israeli government. Filmmakers Ken Loach and Mike Leigh called for a boycott and Curzon responded by ending its support for the festival. Good.
Curzon offers the usual streaming service, which we’ve yet to explore. Because we’re fortunate to live in London and have a bunch of Curzon cinemas nearby, earlier this week we went to see Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. Sadly, maybe predictably, it’s truly woeful—way worse than we imagined it would be, and we went in with low expectations. Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway are woeful, the American accents that flood the film are woeful, the storytelling mangled, the action boring and the philosophy erased. But there are some good shots of the ocean and Samantha Morton as the witch-goddess Circe is great. Incomparably better is the Return, a 2024 film directed by Uberto Pasolini and starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche that depicts Odysseus’s return to Ithaca.
But last night we went on a second Curzon adventure and saw The Invite, which is one of the funniest and sharpest films I’ve seen for a long time. The scenario: one couple that argues endlessly invites another couple who live above them and enjoy loud sex to dinner. I’ll leave it at that, save to say that the film stars Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton, Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde. Penélope Cruz gets a special mention because in addition to being a consistently compelling actor she has shown solidarity with the Palestinians, as has her husband, Javier Bardem.
While many actors have remained silent, a growing number have shown major support. Just two days ago, 20 actors who’ve appeared in Marvel films—including Cate Blanchett, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ian McKellen, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton and Hugo Weaving—called for the release of Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti, held in prison by Israel, apparently in solitary confinement, since 2023. Barghouti is seen as the most likely unifier of the Palestinians of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank—so Israel can’t let him out because Israel has to crush any sign of Palestinian strength.
Every artist who’s taken a stand has risen in the esteem of people who place humanity above Zionist nationalism. Susan Sarandon has also been a true warrior. Cate Blanchett gets an extra mention for the ingenious black, green and white dress she wore on the red carpet at Cannes in May 2024. Mark Ruffalo has been standing as boldly as anyone during his stand-off with Paramount—run by hardcore Zionist David Ellison, Oracle, run by David’s dad and hardcore Zionist Larry Ellison—over Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros, which David Ellison is supporting with $40 billion in equity.
Mark noted that the merger represents a dangerous consolidation of power, because the money funding it is tied to a technology company (Oracle) that supplies “profoundly scary technologies” to the Israeli military. He included a link to an Oracle executive making precisely this claim in September 2024,
The audience laughs out loud and applauds. Mark pointed out that the merger could formalise a direct chain from Oracle to Paramount to Israel—because Oracle has been supplying software to the IDF, the Israeli government and Israeli police for decades. The head of Oracle’s sales division said last year: “Supporting Israel is in our DNA – even if it costs us clients. That’s our agenda.”
Predictably the Ellisons and their backers responded by calling Mark an antisemite. For the millionth time—or it is more?—criticising Israel, its apartheid structure, its ethnic cleansing and its genocide is not the same thing as hating Jewish people. If anything its the opposite. It’s the best way forward to stop people assuming that Jewish people support apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide, all of which are hateful.
We stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and will do so until they achieve justice. We salute everyone in the film industry and beyond who shows solidarity, even when it threatens their income. Yes, actors who are worth millions have less to lose than lowly-paid workers who can’t afford to risk their employment. Ultimately we stand together and support one another. And Curzon is a thousand times better than complicit Mubi.