The director of the Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday rejected accusations from greater than 80 movie business figures that the competition had helped censor artists who oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.
In an open letter revealed on Tuesday, Oscar-winning actors Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton have been amongst dozens who criticised the Berlinale’s “silence” on the difficulty and stated they have been “dismayed” at its “involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza”.
In an interview with Screen Daily, the Berlinale’s director, Tricia Tuttle, stated the competition backs “free speech within the bounds of German law”.
She stated she acknowledged that the letter got here from “the depth of anger and frustration about the suffering of people in Gaza”.
However, she rejected accusations of censorship, saying that the letter contained “misinformation” and “inaccurate claims about the Berlinale” made with out proof or anonymously.
The row over Gaza has dogged this 12 months’s version of the competition since jury president Wim Wenders answered a query on the battle by saying: “We cannot really enter the field of politics.”
The feedback prompted award-winning novelist Arundhati Roy, who had been as a result of current a restored model of a movie she wrote, to withdraw from the competition.
Tuttle stated the competition represents “lots of people who have different views, including lots of people who live in Germany who want a more complex understanding of Israel’s positionality than maybe the rest of the world has right now”.
German politicians have been largely supportive of Israel as Germany seeks to atone for the legacy of the Holocaust.
However, German public opinion has been extra important of Israeli actions in Gaza.
Commenting on the row to the Welt TV channel, German Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer defended Wenders and Tuttle from criticism, saying they have been working the competition “in a very balanced way, very sensitively”.
“Artists should not be told what to do when it comes to politics. The Berlinale is not an NGO with a camera and directors,” Weimer stated.
Gaza has regularly been a subject of controversy on the Berlinale in recent times.
In 2024, the competition’s documentary award went to “No Other Land”, which follows the dispossession of Palestinian communities within the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
German authorities officers criticised “one-sided” remarks about Gaza by the administrators of that movie and others at that 12 months’s awards ceremony.
© 2026 AFP