The Post: Steven Spielberg film banned in Lebanon

Director Steven Spielberg's name is on a "boycott Israel" list, due to filming scenes in Jerusalem for Schindler's List

(Rex Features (Rex Features)

Lebanon has banned Steven Spielberg's The Post, days before it was set to premiere in Beirut.

A source involved in the film's international distribution told The Hollywood Reporter that it was presented to the Lebanese censorship board, who banned it citing a "boycott Israel" list that includes Spielberg's name, due to his Oscar-winning Holocaust film Schindler's List, which shot some scenes in Jerusalem.

However, over the last three years, at least five films either directed or produced by Spielberg have been approved by the censorship board and released in Lebanon, including The BFG and Bridge of Spies, and only now is Spielberg's inclusion on the "boycott Israel" list being invoked.

The matter has now been transferred to Lebanon's Minister of Interior and Municipalities, who could still overturn the decision.

Lebanon is officially at war with Israel; Wonder Woman was previously banned from the country due to its Israeli star Gal Gadot, who served in the military (although it is compulsory for all Israeli citizens to serve in the military).

A spokesperson for Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment says no comment can be issued on the matter as the company has not been officially told by the Lebanese distributor that the film will not be released there.

The 1970s-set film, starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, depicts the true story of the journalists from The Washington Post and The New York Times who published the Pentagon Papers, classified documents which proved the Johnson administration had lied both to the public and to Congress about the Vietnam War.

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