The fact that Mel Gibson received a lifetime achievement award at the opening of the 2014 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic on Friday has really angered the Jewish community in the country. They claim that Mel’s film The Passion of the Christ shows Jews as “evil and blood-thirsty”.

Jewish organization’s leaders wrote to festival bosses: “By granting this award, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival becomes another of the very arguable platforms that are gradually changing the atmosphere of our country from a traditional, relatively tolerant society into one where space is given to hostility, xenophobia, and anti-Semitic ideas.”

Spokesperson for the festival, Uljana Donatova, said: “Our highest award is for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinematography and therefore we’ve assessed the film career of Mr. Gibson as a whole. The particular film mentioned by the federation isn’t even on our screening program.”

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