Why has Disney's ‘Snow White' remake been banned in Lebanon?
Lebanon has banned Disney's live-action film
Snow White
from playing in cinemas because Israeli actress Gal Gadot is on the country's boycott list.
According to local newspaper An-Nahar, Ahmad Hajjar, Lebanon's Interior Minister, recommended the ban.
This is not the first time Lebanon has banned Gadot and films the 39-year-old actress has starred in. Both
Death On The Nile
and the Wonder Woman films were prevented from screening in the country due to the actress' ties to Israel.
Gadot, who stars as the Evil Queen in
Snow White
, was born in Israel and prior to becoming a model and actress, served in the Israel Defense Forces. The actress has been a prominent supporter of Israel since October 7.
During an impassioned speech at the Anti-Defamation League's summit in 2024, she said: 'Never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States, and different cities around the world, we would see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying and cheering on a massacre of Jews.'
The ban was prompted by the country's film and media watchdog during Israel's attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon that have resulted in civilian casualties. It follows Lebanon's earlier decision to block Marvel's
Captain America: Brave New World
, which stars Israeli actress Shira Haas.
Gal Gadot in Snow White
Disney
From racist attacks on the film's Latina lead, Rachel Zegler, to controversy over the portrayal of the seven dwarfs and Gal Gadot's pro-Israel stance clashing with Zegler's comments on Palestine,
Snow White
has been fraught with controversy. Indeed, Zegler has been publicly pro-Palestine since 2021, and there were already calls for bans last year when the teaser trailer was released.
Disney scaled back the 15 March Los Angeles premiere of the film due to ongoing controversies and since its premiere,
Snow White
has been both a critical and box office bomb.
In
our review
, we wrote: 'Despite a committed performance from Rachel Zegler, who almost
almost
manages to make you forget that Gal Gadot simply cannot act or convincingly read a line, there's no getting around the skin-melting CGI monstrosity of the seven dwarfs. Granted, the film was between a rock and a hard place when it came to casting, but the end solution of having creepy digital avatars that are both photorealistic and Uncanny Valley-levels of distracting is misjudged in the extreme. How this nightmare fuel got past the unsharpened pencils in the quality control committee will remain a mystery for the ages.'
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