Here’s something smart someone once said: “Every film is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be: ‘entertainment’ movies. They are the most political films there are because they dismiss the possibility of change. In every frame, they tell you everything’s fine the way it is. They are a continual advertisement for things as they are.”
Here’s the same fellow some time later, having been comped a five-star hotel suite and some nice nosh: “We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics,” he said. “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.”
Both quotes are from Wim Wenders, the head of jury at this year’s Berlinale film festival. He sailed into a sea of political controversy last Thursday with the nonchalance of the captain of the Titanic.
Who could’ve known that there would be a question about Gaza in the festival’s opening press conference, attended by members of the judging panel? Well, anyone awake in the last two years.
In 2024, two of the filmmakers behind West Bank documentary No Other Land gave a short speech about Israel’s actions in the occupied territories here. Their behaviour was subsequently described by a Bundestag resolution as one of the “biggest antisemitism scandals of recent years.” Then last year, the police opened investigations against attendees of the festival when the phrase “from the river to the sea” was used publicly, an investigation the festival cooperated with.
This year’s conflict began when a German journalist asked the jury why they thought the festival had not issued a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people, in sharp contrast to its full-throated support of Ukraine and Ukrainian filmmakers following the Russian invasion and later, its vocal support of protesters in Iran.
Polish producer and jury member Ewa Puszczyńska replied: ”There are many wars where genocide is committed, and we do not talk about them… so this is a complicated question and it’s a bit of an unfair question.” It’s mindboggling that the producer of The Zone of Interest should spread such misinformation.
There are no other conflicts in progress in which genocide is currently taking place, except for Gaza. Genocide Watch says it may potentially be taking place in Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Confoand Mynamar, but Gaza is the one place where multiple organisations recognise it as an ongoing situation. And it’s the only place where support by Germany, the USA and other European powers have, to some degree, facilitated Israel’s actions.
Due to a technical issue, the live feed of the press conference cut out just as the German journalist asked his question. A coincidence, surely.
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If they wanted to keep politics out of the Berlinale, they could not have been more cackhanded. The headlines around the world have been about nothing else, with nary a film mentioned. They’ve become like puritans shouting so graphically about how we shouldn’t have sex that we all end up horny. Writer Arundhati Roy pulled out of the festival she’d been due to attend, presenting a restored version of her 1989 film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, saying: “To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping.”
And now every star and director at the festival is being asked about politics at every press conference and on the red carpet. To the point that we got a statement of quite some length from artist director Tricia Tuttle – call it the Tuttle rebuttal – telling us there’s nothing to really talk about and really can’t we just stop talking about politics and politics and politics. Be good, watch the films as they change the world one heart at a time.
I feel her pain. Rupert Grint hasn’t really got an answer for how to fight fascism, or that Neil Patrick Harris is “always interested in doing things that are apolitical.” As Michael Jordan says, “Republicans buy sneakers too.”
This is the thing. The Berlinale is sponsored by Armani Beauty and TikTok, Mastercard and the Cupra automotive brand. For all the films might attack notions of patriarchy, colonialism, hierarchy, and patriarchy, we still have glamour and the star system, VIPs and deference.
The social realist star who convinced you so much in the drama about the immigrant living hand to mouth will be unrecognisable wearing haute couture for the gala premiere on the red carpet. There is a genuine tension between power and art; and when artists themselves become seduced by the trappings their rationalisations begin to appeal more to the hearts rather than the brains; they talk about empathy rather than solidarity; our truths, rather than the actual truth.
Let me repurpose the Wim Wenders quote I began with: “Every film [festival] is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be… They are a continual advertisement for things as they are.”
As I was writing this on the morning of Sunday, February 15, 11 people in Gaza were killed by Israeli airstrikes.
The Berlinale runs until February 22. John Bleasdale’s novel Connery, about the life of Sean Connery, is published by Plumeria
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