MALMO, Sweden: The second semifinal of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Sweden on Thursday, with Israel’s performance expected to draw attention due to large pro-Palestinian protests planned in host city Malmo.
Some 100,000 visitors have gathered in Malmo in southern Sweden for the annual kitsch-fest, which is watched by some 200 million people worldwide.
Thursday’s semifinal will feature two of the favorites to win, Switzerland’s Nemo with the song “The Code” and Joost Klein of the Netherlands with the song “Europapa,” as well as outsider Eden Golan of Israel with her song “Hurricane.”
The 68th version of the song contest takes place amid protests and boycotts over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the event, has resisted calls for Israel to be excluded but asked Israel to modify the lyrics of its original song “October Rain,” which appeared to reference the Hamas attack.
Tens of thousands are expected at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central Malmo at 1300 GMT on Thursday. A smaller nearby pro-Israel demonstration is scheduled for 1600 GMT.
Gaza-born Swedish student and Palestinian activist Bachar Garar, 23, will protest what he calls double standards, pointing to EBU’s decision to ban Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“After everything that happened, how they’ve treated Russia after what happened in Ukraine, they just choose to turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Gaza. So that’s hypocrisy for us and we’re trying to put an end to it,” he said.
Israeli contestant Golan, 20, says she hopes her performance will help unite people.
“It’s a super important moment for us, especially this year,” she told Reuters in an interview this week. “I feel honored to have the opportunity to be the voice of my country.”
At the first semifinal on Tuesday, thousands of fans in quirky and glittery outfits, many dressed up as their favorite contestant or in their national colors, saw 10 performers, including favorites Croatia and Ukraine, qualify for Saturday’s final.
Swedish authorities have heightened security and are bracing for possible unrest during Eurovision week.
“There are sometimes more police than people in sequins, but overall great fun, we’re having a great time,” said United Kingdom supporter Francesca Gaffey, wearing colorful rhine stones on her forehead, a flower headband and a t-shirt with the Eurovision slogan ‘United by Music’.
Thursday’s semifinal is due to begin at 1900 GMT and will also feature contestants from Malta, Albania, Greece, the Czech Republic, Austria, Denmark, Armenia, Latvia, San Marino, Georgia, Belgium, Estonia, and Norway.
Bookmakers have Croatia, Switzerland, Italy and Ukraine as the favorites to win, while streaming data from Spotify suggests a strong chance for the Netherlands or host nation Sweden.

VENICE: For its second showing during the Venice Biennale, Qatar is staging the exhibition “Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices” that takes a profound, in-depth look at the last decade of film and video art by Arab, South Asian and African filmmakers.

While Qatar has yet to have its own national pavilion, its exhibition occupies the 459-year-old Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti on the Grand Canal. The works on show are drawn from the collections of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Contemporary Art, the Doha Film Institute and the forthcoming Art Mill Museum (scheduled to open in 2030). It is divided into ten galleries, each comprising films and video art according to a specific theme such as ruins, women’s voices, borders, exile and deserts and is curated by Paris-based Matthieu Orlean, a film and video expert. The exhibition will run until November 2024.

“Film is very relevant to our institutions and is an important part of our collections,” Zeina Arida, Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Arab Art in Doha, told Arab News.

“It is a great way to document our contemporary times,” she added. “Film is also a great way of to share who we are and what we are going through, what we as societies from these less represented countries are living and the issues we are facing.”

In-depth storytelling can be found in the films on view by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, Larissa Sansour, Fares Fayyad, Ali Cherri, Shaima Al-Tamimi, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Hassan Khan and Sophia Al-Maria, among others.

In a documentary and largely journalistic style, many of the works shed light on current events and issues not often covered in mainstream media, including the now one-year old conflict in Sudan or migrants seeking new homes such as those captured in the film by Yemeni East African filmmaker Shaima Al-Tamini who charted the journey of her family from Kenya and Zanibar to the UAE.

“I was looking at movies that were different from the rest — that take a risk of telling their own story in a specific way,” curator Orlean told Arab News. “The filmmakers of these films are foreigners in their own environment because they are capturing events, whether personal or collective, that many people don’t see even in the news. Many deal with the themes of migration, social differences and exile.”

The works on view showcase both long and short films. A few highlights include Ali Cherri’s “The Dam” (2022), charting the story of a Darfuri seasonal worker from Sudan who works during the night to create a mud-brick monument. The film is a political fable that tells of the power of imagination against the backdrop of the Sudanese revolution. There is also Qatari artist Sophia Al-Maria’s well-known work “Black Friday” (2016) and British-born Egyptian multimedia artist Hassan Khan’s “Jewel” (2010) featuring a luminescent fish in dark waters followed by two men dancing to Arabic music.

“‘Jewel’ was triggered by a moment witnessed on the street in Cairo in 2006 — two men dancing around a speaker with raw, brutal and beautiful music blaring out,” Khan told Arab News. “It took four years before I could finally produce the work for Mathaf's opening exhibition in 2010 and by then so much was bubbling around us that it seemed to channel something real. Imagine a one second flickering daydream slowed down and stretched into six intense minutes. It is about our deepest sources — history, culture, emotion — and how we communicate the alien that lives inside all of us.”