Award-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy has pulled out of the Berlin International Film Festival (better known as Berlinale) over the festival’s “jaw-dropping” stance on Gaza.
Roy’s decision came after comments made by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, who is also this year’s jury head, in which he suggested that filmmaking should not be directly political.
Wenders, who began his career in the 1970’s as part of the often explicitly left-wing New German Cinema movement, told a press conference that they had to “stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics”.
“But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians,” he said.
Asked about Germany’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, another jury member Ewa Puszczynska said it was an “unfair” question and said there were “many other wars where genocide is committed, and we do not talk about that”.
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The comments have sparked a backlash, with some pointing to Wenders’ directly contradictory comments about the festival in 2024, in which he said Berlinale had “traditionally always been the most political of the major festivals, it doesn’t stay out of things now, and it won’t in the future either… I like the Berlinale because it always speaks up and says something”.
More than 200 films will be shown over the 10 days of the festival, of which 22 will be in competition for the Golden Bear, the top prize.
In Roy’s statement announcing her withdrawal, the author condemned the comments at the festival, which receives funding from the German government.
“This morning, like millions of people across the world, I heard the unconscionable statements made by members of the jury of the Berlin film festival when they were asked to comment about the genocide in Gaza,” she said in a statement first carried by Indian media.
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“To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping. It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time – when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”
It is not the first time the festival has faced controversy over Gaza.
The 2024 Berlinale faced outcry over the (later withdrawn) opening ceremony invitation for the far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD), and was branded “one-sided” and “antisemitic” by various German officials over comments made by the award-winning Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham.
Abraham’s documentary No Other Land, which he co-directed with Basel Adra, a Palestinian from Masafer Yatta, depicted the Israeli state-sanctioned destruction of a small Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank.
“I am living under a civilian law and Basel is under military law,” Abraham said in his acceptance speech.
“I have voting rights; Basel [does not have] voting rights. I’m free to move where I want in this land; Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank.”
There was further outcry after German Culture Minister Claudia Roth claimed she had only clapped for a speech by Abraham, and not Adra. The film later won an Oscar.
