Austrian Jews press charges over 'anti-Semitic' Turkish film

Vienna, Austria - The Jewish Community in Vienna pressed charges Tuesday against cinema operators and a distributor on Tuesday, alleging that a Turkish film, Valley of the Wolves - Palestine, was anti-Semitic.

Politicians and Jewish groups in Austria and Germany had criticized the action film ahead of its release on Thursday, which coincided with Holocaust Memorial Day.

The film was guilty of incitement to religious hatred and insulting religious faiths, because it uses anti-Semitic stereotypes, the Jewish Community's Secretary General Raimund Fastenbauer alleged.

Summing up his view of the film, Fastenbauer said: "One of the main things is that a Jewish world conspiracy forms the background to all Israeli actions."

He also claimed that Valley of the Wolves indirectly compares the situation of Palestinians to the Holocaust.

The movie tells the fictional story of Turkish agents who extract revenge on an Israeli officer involved in last-year's real-life seizure of aid ships headed to the Gaza Strip, in which nine Turkish activists were killed.

The film is screened by the UCI cinema chain and distributed by Germany-based Pera film in Austria.

In Germany, it came in ninth in the most recent film charts Monday.