"Stay Out of Politics"

The “movies can change the world, but not in a political way” stance at the Berlin Film Festival paves the way for a counter-art for art’s sake is a pretence that can no longer hold up

- By Debanjan Dhar

ON the opening day of this year's edition, the Berlin Film Festival landed in a media soup. The first press conference with the main competition jury fielded the pivotal question by German journalist Tilo Jung about the Berlinale's selective sympathies. Jung flagged that “the Berlinale as an institution has famously shown solidarity with people in Iran and Ukraine, but never with Palestine, even today”. Germany is one of the biggest exporters of weapons to Israel. Conveniently, the livestream was cut off before Jung's question could be heard in its entirety. The festival claimed technical issues but the timing couldn't be more suspicious.

Ewa Puszczynska, the Polish producer of the Oscar-winning Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest, termed the question unfair, adding that cinema cannot be held responsible for “the decision to support Israel, or the decision to support Palestine”. Jury president Wim Wenders came under fire for proposing that filmmakers ought to stay out of politics. He asserted that “movies can change the world”, but “not in a political way”.

The celebrated Paris, Texas filmmaker's remarks sent shockwaves rippling, prompting Booker Prizewinning author Arundhati Roy to cancel her scheduled appearance at the festival. Roy, who was due to present her 1989 campus comedy In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones as part of the Classics section, wrote in a statement first shared with The Wire that she was “shocked and disgusted” by the “unconscionable” remarks of the jury. “To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping,” Roy wrote. “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.”

Wenders' comments strike one as a reversal of his own well-quoted observations in his 1988 book, The Logic of Images: