During yesterday’s opening press conference for the 2026 Berlinale, jury honcho Wim Wenders, asked about Gaza genocide, said that movies should operate in a realm above or at least separate from politics. “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.”
Wenders’ statement begins at 2:43 in the below video clip.
Alarmed response from Indian author Arundhati Roy, who has pulled out of participating in the festival: “This morning 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. 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.”
HE statement: I’m fine with political filmmaking as long as it’s provocative or transgressive (i.e., anti-woke, anti-kneejerk Israeli hating). I’m also fine with zero political content. But I get what Wenders was trying to say, which is that agenda art is not good art. Passionate political filmmaking has a necessary place in our world, of course, but Wenders was making an anti-woke statement, and good for him.
