Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Alia Shawkat and more than 80 entertainment figures, all past and present participants of the Berlinale, have come together in an open letter slamming the film festival over its “silence” on Gaza.
Other signatures on letter are from notable Hollywood figures, including Adam McKaty, Tobias Menzies and Mike Leigh.
“We write as film workers, all of us past and current Berlinale participants, who expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity in the terrible violence that continues to be waged against Palestinians,” the open letter, which was released Tuesday, per reports.
“We are dismayed at the Berlinale’s involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the German state’s key role in enabling it,” the letter continues. “As the Palestine Film Institute has stated, the festival has been ‘policing filmmakers alongside a continued commitment to collaborate with Federal Police on their investigations.’”
The group’s letter comes after German filmmaker and photographer Wim Wenders, who is also president of the International Jury for the 76th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), stated that “we should stay out of politics” after being questioned about the festival’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war.
Wenders leads this year’s international jury, which also includes American filmmaker Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard”), Polish film producer Ewa Puszczyńska (“The Zone of Interest”), Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham (“Shambala”), South Korean actress Bae Doona (“Sense8”), Indian filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (“Celluloid Man”) and Japanese filmmaker Hikari (“Rental Family”).
At the time, he said the jury is “the counterweight of politics.”
“We are the opposite of politics.We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians,” the “Perfect Days” filmmaker added. Earlier, when the jury was asked if films have the power to change the world, Wenders responded, “Movies can change the world, not in a political way.”
“No movie has really changed any politician’s idea, but you can change people’s idea of how they should live,” Wenders mentioned. “Cinema has an incredible power of being compassionate and being empathetic. The news [is] not, politics [is] not empathetic. But movies are.”
“There’s a big discrepancy on this planet between people who want to live their lives and governments who have other ideas,” he concluded. “I think films enter that discrepancy.”
The message concluded its message by calling on the festival to oppose Israel’s “genocide.”
“We call on the Berlinale to fulfill its moral duty and clearly state its opposition to Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and completely end its involvement in shielding Israel from criticism and calls for accountability,” it concludes.
Check out the full letter below:
We write as film workers, all of us past and current Berlinale participants, who expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity in the terrible violence that continues to be waged against Palestinians. We are dismayed at the Berlinale’s involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the German state’s key role in enabling it. As the Palestine Film Institute has stated, the festival has been “policing filmmakers alongside a continued commitment to collaborate with Federal Police on their investigations”.
Last year, filmmakers who spoke out for Palestinian life and liberty from the Berlinale stage reported being aggressively reprimanded by senior festival programmers. One filmmaker was reported to have been investigated by police, and Berlinale leadership falsely implied that the filmmaker’s moving speech – rooted in international law and solidarity – was “discriminatory”. As another filmmaker told Film Workers for Palestine about last year’s festival: “there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, of not being protected and of being persecuted, which I had never felt before at a film festival”. We stand with our colleagues in rejecting this institutional repression and anti-Palestinian racism.
We fervently disagree with the statement made by Berlinale 2026 jury president Wim Wenders that filmmaking is “the opposite of politics”. You cannot separate one from the other. We are deeply concerned that the German state-funded Berlinale is helping put into practice what Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion recently condemned as Germany’s misuse of draconian legislation “to restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights, chilling public participation and shrinking discourse in academia and the arts”. This is also what Ai Weiwei recently described as Germany “doing what they did in the 1930s” (agreeing with his interviewer who suggested to him that “it’s the same fascist impulse, just a different target”). All of this at a time when we are learning horrifying new details about the 2,842 Palestinians “evaporated” by Israeli forces using internationally prohibited, U.S.-made thermal and thermobaric weapons. Despite abundant evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent, systematic atrocity crimes and ethnic cleansing, Germany continues to supply Israel with weapons used to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza.
The tide is changing across the international film world. Many international film festivals have endorsed the cultural boycott of apartheid Israel, including the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the world’s biggest, as well as BlackStar Film Festival in the U.S., and Film Fest Gent, Belgium’s largest. More than 5,000 film workers, including leading Hollywood and international figures, have also announced their refusal to work with complicit Israeli film companies and institutions.
Yet Berlinale has so far not even met the demands of its community to issue a statement that affirms the Palestinian right to life, dignity, and freedom; condemns the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians; and commits to uphold the right of artists to speak without constraint in support of Palestinian human rights. This is the least it can – and should – do.
As the Palestine Film Institute has said, “we are appalled by Berlinale’s institutional silence on the genocide of Palestinians, and its unwillingness to defend the freedoms of speech and expression of filmmakers”. Just as the festival has made clear statements in the past about atrocities carried out against people in Iran and Ukraine, we call on the Berlinale to fulfil its moral duty and clearly state its opposition to Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and completely end its involvement in shielding Israel from criticism and calls for accountability.
The 2026 Berlinale is set to kick off Thursday night with Shahrbanoo Sadat’s film “No Good Men” and will run until Feb. 22.
