{"id":469723,"date":"2026-02-15T07:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T07:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/469723\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T07:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T07:38:09","slug":"politics-take-center-stage-at-the-berlinale-as-social-media-backlash-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/469723\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics Take Center Stage at the Berlinale as Social Media Backlash Looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Berlinale has always worn its politics<\/a> proudly. Conceived in 1950 by American film<\/a> officer Oscar Martay as a cultural bulwark in a divided city, the festival was designed as a \u201cshowcase of the free world,\u201d a celebration of artistic freedom meant to stand in sharp contrast to life just beyond the Iron Curtain. Over the decades, Berlin has largely embraced that heritage \u2014 backing Iranian protesters during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, condemning Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and offering a platform to Ukrainian filmmakers in exile.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year, however, politics threatens to overwhelm the festival itself. In press conference after press conference, talent has found itself fielding questions less about their films than about Gaza, German state funding and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. What was once a forum for engaged \u2014 sometimes heated \u2014 debate has, critics argue, become a stage for viral confrontation.<\/p>\n

The flashpoint came at the first press conference on Thursday, when Berlinale jury president Wim Wenders was asked (by activist German blogger Tilo Jung) whether Germany\u2019s support for Israel \u2014 and its financial backing of the Berlinale \u2014 compromised the festival\u2019s freedom of expression. The premise: was the festival being muzzled?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have to stay out of politics,\u201d Wenders replied. \u201cIf we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the counterweight to politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe answer detonated almost immediately. Acclaimed Indian author Arundhati Roy pulled out of a scheduled Berlinale appearance, calling the jury\u2019s remarks \u201cunconscionable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping,\u201d Roy wrote. \u201cIt is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time.\u201d
Berlinale organizers said they \u201crespect this decision\u201d and \u201cregret that we will not welcome her as her presence would have enriched the festival discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWenders was hardly alone in trying to deflect political crossfire.<\/p>\n

\n\tHonorary Golden Bear recipient Michelle Yeoh was pressed within minutes of her official press conference about the U.S. political landscape. \u201cI don\u2019t think I am in the position to really talk about the political situation in the U.S.,\u201d she said, pivoting back to cinema.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeil Patrick Harris, in Berlin with the Generation title\u00a0Sunny Dancer, faced pointed questions about American democracy and healthcare systems. \u201cWhile I have my own political opinions,\u201d Harris said, \u201cI never read this script as a political statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome embraced the politics. Finnish director Hanna Bergholm wore a watermelon pin in support of Palestine, at the press conference for Nightborn, her new feature starring Rupert Grint.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs grown-up human beings, I think we have a responsibility to speak up against violence and against injustice, because not speaking up is also a choice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor longtime Berlin observers, it\u2019s not the presence of politics that feels new \u2014 it\u2019s the framing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPolitics is always fair game,\u201d says Deborah Cole, Berlin-based correspondent for\u00a0The Guardian. \u201cBut there is usually some relationship between the subject matter of the film and then the questions delving into the views of the cast and the director as to how they see issues related to the film that they\u2019re presenting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Wenders\u2019 case, she notes, the question about German funding was built around the assumption that the festival was being silenced. \u201cI don\u2019t have the sense that free speech at the Berlinale this year is under attack,\u201d she says. She compares the situation to 2024 when the Israeli-Palestinian documentary\u00a0No Man\u2019s Land, which chronicles Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, won the festival\u2019s best documentary prize.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfterwards, you had politicians attacking the people who expressed their political views on stage. The directors, who had made the film about this subject. I found that to be beyond the pale,\u201d says Cole. \u201cThis is not that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe argues the shift is partly technological. \u201cIt feels like a mix of technology and activism,\u201d Cole says. \u201cThe idea is to produce short clips that go on social media and often without context. .. If you look at the aftermath, how [the Wenders clip] was posted and talked about on social media, there did seem to a gotcha element to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSimilars with Wenders, the \u201cno politics\u201d comments by Yeoh and Harris have been turned into online rage bait clogging social media feeds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe festival issued a statement late Saturday in response to the viral backlash.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs we enter the first 48 hours of this year\u2019s Festival, a media storm has swept over the Berlinale,\u201d it reads. \u201cWe feel it is important to speak out \u2013 in defense of our filmmakers, and especially our Jury and Jury President. Some of what is currently circulating takes remarks from press conferences detached not only\u00a0out of context of\u00a0the full conversations but also from the lifetime of work and values these artists\u00a0represent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement<\/a>, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle noted that \u201cpeople have called for free speech at the Berlinale. Free speech is happening at the Berlinale. But increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer any question put to them. They are criticized if they do not answer. They are criticized if they answer and we do not like what they say. They are criticized if they cannot compress complex thoughts into a brief sound bite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they were speaking about something else.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tTuttle added it was \u201chard to see the Berlinale and so many hundreds of filmmakers and people who work on this festival distilled into something we do not always recognize in the online and media discourse.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tShe reiterated that at the Berlinale all \u201cartists are free to exercise their right of free speech in whatever way they choose. Artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival\u2019s previous or current practices over which they have no control. Nor should they be expected to speak on every political issue raised to them unless they want to.\u201d (You can read the full statement below). <\/p>\n

\n\tOnscreen, the Berlinale remains as politically engaged as ever.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe festival opened with Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0No Good Men, following a female camerawoman navigating life and work in Kabul \u2014 a selection with an unmistakable geopolitical echo.
Iran, long a focal point of Berlinale activism, features prominently across the 2026 lineup. Mahnaz Mohammadi\u2019s Panorama title\u00a0Roya<\/a>\u00a0centers on an Iranian teacher imprisoned in Tehran\u2019s Evin Prison and forced to choose between a televised confession and indefinite confinement in her three-square-meter cell. In Generation, Mehraneh Salimian\u2019s documentary\u00a0Memories of a Window\u00a0examines the crackdown on student protests in Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn opening night, Iranian creatives walked the red carpet holding \u201cFree Iran\u201d signs. On Friday, the Iranian Independent Filmmakers Association staged a performance at Potsdamer Platz, with volunteers lying flat on the ground to symbolize those killed during the January 2026 protests.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just here to emphasize the Iranian corpses left alone on the streets,\u201d said IIFMA editor-in-chief Amirata Joolaee. \u201cMost people were banned. They were restricted. They couldn\u2019t go there to collect their own beloved ones\u2019 corpses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe political stakes are not abstract. Two Iranian filmmakers \u2014 Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, whose\u00a0My Favourite Cake\u00a0won the FIPRESCI Prize and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2024 Berlinale \u2014 remain detained in Iran.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn other words, Berlin is still programming political cinema and providing space for political expression. The question is whether the climate around the press conferences is beginning to undermine that mission.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrit pop star and actress Charli xcx, in town to present her mockumentary The Moment, with director Aidan Zamiri, lauded the festival for \u201cnot shying away from political films, from films that have a real social angle, from films by directors who really are visionary and have something to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe very sad irony,\u201d Cole says, \u201cis that this can be one of the things that clamps down on free speech as well. People fear that they are going to be skewered on social media immediately, and so will either opt not to attend or opt not to speak at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf filmmakers begin to see Berlin less as a platform and more as a trap for viral \u201cgotcha\u201d moments, she warns, the consequences could be severe. \u201cIf it\u2019s adversarial, and this adversarial targeting takes place,\u201d Cole says, \u201cI think it could be the beginning of the end of something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFull statement by Berlinale Director Tricia Tuttle <\/p>\n

\n\tOn Speaking, Cinema and Politics
noted by Tricia Tuttle
There are many different kinds of art, and many different ways of being political. Individual approaches vary greatly.<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople have called for free speech at the Berlinale. Free speech is happening at the Berlinale. But increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer any question put to them. They are criticised if they do not answer. They are criticised if they answer and we do not like what they say. They are criticised if they cannot compress complex thoughts into a brief sound bite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they were speaking about something else.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is hard to see the Berlinale and so many hundreds of filmmakers and people who work on this festival distilled into something we do not always recognise in the online and media discourse. Over the next ten days at the Berlinale, filmmakers are speaking constantly. They are speaking through their work. They are speaking about their work. They are speaking, at times, about geopolitics that may or may not be related to their films. It is a large, complex festival. A festival that people value in so many different ways and for so many reasons.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are 278 films in this year\u2019s programme. They carry many perspectives. There are films about genocide, about sexual violence in war, about corruption, about patriarchal violence, about colonialism or abusive state power. There are filmmakers here who have faced violence and genocide in their lives, who may face prison, exile, and even death for the work they have made or the positions they have taken. They come to Berlin and share their work with courage. This is happening now. Are we amplifying those voices enough?<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are also filmmakers who come to the Berlinale with different political aims: to ask how we can talk about art as art, and how we can keep cinemas alive so that independent films still have a place to be seen and discussed. In a media environment dominated by crisis, there is less oxygen left for serious conversation about film or culture at all, unless it can be folded as well into a news agenda.
Some films express a politics with a small \u201cp\u201d: they examine power in daily life, who and what is seen or unseen, included or excluded. Others engage with Politics with a capital \u201cP\u201d: governments, state policy, institutions of power and justice. This is a choice. Speaking to power happens in visible ways, and sometimes in quieter personal ones. Across the history of the Berlinale, many artists have made human rights central to their work. Others have made films which we see as quietly radical political acts which focus on small, fragile moments of care, beauty, love, or on people who are invisible to most of us, people who are alone. They help us make connections to our shared humanity through their movies. And in a broken world this is precious.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat links so many of these filmmakers at the Berlinale is a deep respect for human dignity. We do not believe there is a filmmaker screening in this festival who is indifferent to what is happening in this world, who does not take the rights, the lives and the immense suffering of people in Gaza and the West Bank, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Sudan, in Iran, in Ukraine, in Minneapolis, and in a terrifying number of places, seriously.<\/p>\n

\n\tArtists are free to exercise their right of free speech in whatever way they choose. Artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival\u2019s previous or current practices over which they have no control. Nor should they be expected to speak on every political issue raised to them unless they want to.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe continue to do this work because we love cinema but we also hope and believe watching films can change things even if that is the glacial shift of changing people, one heart or mind at a time.
We thank our team, guests, juries, our filmmakers, and the many others engaged with the Berlinale for cool heads in hot times.<\/p>\n

\n\tFebruary 14, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berlinale has always worn its politics proudly. Conceived in 1950 by American film officer Oscar Martay as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[216423,88,2695,2091,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-469723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-berlin-2026","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}