Miami Beach Mayor Withdraws Plan to Evict O Cinema Over ‘No Other Land’ Screenings

Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner has withdrawn his proposed plan to evict O Cinema from its publicly owned building over the theater’s decision to screen the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”

Instead, he said at a City Commission meeting on Wednesday that he wants the theater to offer “a fair and balanced viewpoint” going forward, according to the Miami Herald. The update comes the same day that city officials were set to vote on the theater’s future.

Commissioners Tanya Katzoff Bhatt, Laura Dominguez, Alex Fernandez, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and Joseph Magazine voiced their disagreement with Meiner’s plan at said meeting, while David Suarez offered his support. The vast majority of local attendees were in opposition to Meiner’s proposal, per the paper.

“I legitimately viewed this as a public safety threat,” the mayor said. “I really am appreciative of the passion that we saw today.”

On Monday, more than 600 members of the international filmmaking community — including Michael Moore, Barry Jenkins, Marisa Tomei, Ezra Edelman and Phil Lord — signed an open letter condemning Meiner for his threat of censorship. The International Documentary Association, the independent cinema coalition Art House Convergence and PEN America’s Florida director had also spoken out against Meiner’s proposed $40,000 cut in city grant funding.

The controversy began when O Cinema announced screenings for Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s doc, which won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2025 Oscars. The movie from the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers chronicles the displacement of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta by Israeli military and settlers after a court ruling declared the area a “closed military zone.”

Meiner, who is Jewish, responded by sending a letter to O Cinema CEO Vivian Marthell urging her to cancel the screenings, calling the film “a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people.”

“My initial reaction to Mayor Meiner’s threats was made under duress,” Marthell told the Associated Press last week after she initially agreed to pull the film. “After reflecting on the broader implications for free speech and O Cinema’s mission, I (along with the O Cinema board and staff members) agreed it was critical to screen this acclaimed film.”

Meiner then replied, “Normalizing hate and then disseminating antisemitism in a facility owned by the taxpayers of Miami Beach, after O Cinema conceded the ‘concerns of antisemitic rhetoric,’ is unjust to the values of our city and residents and should not be tolerated.”

“No Other Land” is the Academy’s first Best Documentary Feature winner to win without a U.S. distributor. Its release has been handled through an independent booker on a theater-by-theater basis.

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