At Venice, a call for fraternity through film

OO the last weekend of August, as the world’s film elite descend on the canals of Venice for the glitter of the international film festival, another gathering will take shape, one that seeks less to dazzle than to heal.

AI Brief

The Ties That Bind premieres in Venice to promote human fraternity through film, art, and dialogue.
The event is inspired by the 2019 Abu Dhabi Document calling for peace and coexistence across cultures and faiths.
Organisers aim to spark a global movement using culture as a tool for empathy and solidarity beyond politics.

On August 30, The Ties That Bind: A Journey Towards Understanding and Human Fraternity will premiere in the heart of Venice, bringing together diplomats, artists, and filmmakers under a single banner: the belief that culture can be a bridge between divided worlds.

Organised by the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity (HCHF) in collaboration with the Better World Fund (BWF), the event hopes to channel the universal language of cinema toward something far greater than entertainment which is empathy, dialogue, and solidarity.

The initiative draws its spirit from the Abu Dhabi Document on Human Fraternity, a 2019 declaration signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb.

That document called for peace, coexistence, and mutual respect across faiths and nations.

Six years later, its message will echo in Venice, a city long celebrated as a crossroads of civilizations.

“Venice is a place where East once met West, where cultures and ideas flowed as easily as its waters,” the organizers said in a statement.

“By bringing this conversation here, we hope to underline the urgency of building fraternity through creativity.”

The program will feature panels and conversations that move beyond policy language into the realm of human stories, how art can dissolve prejudice, how heritage can be reimagined as common ground, and how film can make strangers feel like kin.

At a time when conflicts and divisions dominate headlines, The Ties That Bind offers a counterpoint: a reminder that cinema can do more than win awards. It can stitch together the fragile fabric of understanding, one frame, one story, one audience at a time.

The gathering takes place alongside the Venice International Film Festival, but its ambitions reach far beyond the red carpet.

The hope is that what begins in Venice will ripple outward, inspiring a global movement that sees culture not as a luxury, but as a lifeline for humanity.