Aki Kaurismaki and Radu Jude are among 35+ filmmakers to sign a letter to Mubi over new investor Sequoia Capital's ties to the Israeli milit
More than 35 filmmakers affiliated with Mubi — including Radu Jude, Aki Kaurismäki, Miguel Gomes and Joshua Oppenheimer — have signed a strongly-worded letter urging the arthouse distributor and streaming platform to not just reconsider its relationship with investor Sequoia Capital, but publicly condemn the company.
Shortly after it was announced that Mubi had secured a $100 million investment from Sequoia at the end of May, sharp criticism began to emerge online after it emerged that the Silicon Valley-based venture capital company had close ties to the Israeli military. Most notably, Sequoia invested in defense-tech startup Kela, founded in July 2024 by four veterans of Israeli intelligence units in response to the terror attacks of Oct. 7 and more than six months into the invasion of Gaza. Kela is currently developing a battlefield operating system enabling militaries to integrate AI and commercial tech. Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire has also drawn fire for social media posts that were accused of being Islamophobic, with more than 1,000 technology workers signing an open letter calling for him to be disciplined.
“Mubi’s financial growth as a company is now explicitly tied to the genocide in Gaza, which implicates all of us that work with Mubi,” reads the letter, whose signatories have all made films released by Mubi, featured on Mubi’s streaming platform or have acted in a film released and/or included on the platform. “We don’t believe an arthouse film platform can meaningfully support a global community of cinephiles while also partnering with a company invested in murdering Palestinian artists and filmmakers.”
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