{"id":290965,"date":"2026-02-14T12:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T12:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/290965\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T12:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T12:23:09","slug":"author-arundhati-roy-quits-berlinale-over-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/290965\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Arundhati Roy quits Berlinale over Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prominent Indian writer Arundhati Roy<\/a> has canceled her planned attendance at the Berlin International Film Festival<\/a>, saying her withdrawal comes in response to “unconscionable statements” made by the jury and its president, Wim Wenders<\/a>, about the Gaza Strip<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“With deep regret, I must say that I will not be attending the Berlinale,”\u00a0Roy wrote in a statement issued by her publisher on Friday.<\/p>\n

At the press conference on the festival’s opening day on Thursday, jury members were asked to comment on the festival’s position on the conflict in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A journalist had accused the festival of showing solidarity with Ukrainians and Iranians but not with Palestinians.<\/p>\n

One jury member,\u00a0Ewa Puszczynska, said asking such a question was “unfair.”<\/p>\n

Jury president Wenders responded,\u00a0“We cannot really enter the field of politics,” and described filmmakers as “the counterweight to politics.”<\/p>\n

In Roy’s statement, she wrote that\u00a0“[to]\u00a0hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time \u2014\u00a0when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”<\/p>\n

Roy, who is known as a firm supporter of the Palestinian cause, was due to attend a Berlinale screening of her 1989 film “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.”<\/p>\n

Germany has been under fire internationally for its diplomatic\u00a0support to Israel, which insists it is targeting Hamas militants\u00a0rather than civilians in Gaza. Hamas is designated as a terrorist group in Israel, Germany and several other countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prominent Indian writer Arundhati Roy has canceled her planned attendance at the Berlin International Film Festival, saying her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-290965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}