There are nearly 300 movies playing in the Berlin International Film Festival. But at this year’s edition, which runs through Sunday, the news and social media discussion has often focused more on politics than film.
Since its opening last Thursday, the festival’s news conferences have become a venue for pointed questions about the views of filmmakers and stars on highly charged topics including the war in Gaza, the German government’s support for Israel’s military and the rise of far-right politics.
Many artists have declined to be drawn on those questions, and festival organizers have pleaded with reporters to focus on the movies. But clips of the exchanges circulating online have stoked a debate about the role of moviemakers in world events.
Things got awkward before the first film had even screened. At the event’s opening news conference, this edition’s jury chairman, the German director Wim Wenders, gave what some saw as an objectionable answer to a journalist’s question about the festival’s stance on Gaza.
“We have to stay out of politics, because if we make movies that are decidedly political, we enter the field of politics,” Wenders said, adding, “We are the counterweight to politics.”
The statement prompted snowballing outrage, fueled by longstanding grievances from some observers about the event’s stance on Israel. Because the Berlinale, as the festival is known, is largely financed by the German government, it must navigate politicians’ demands that it limit criticism of Israeli conduct in Gaza, which some officials describe as antisemitic.
At times, the debate has threatened to overshadow the films themselves. The Berlinale has been roiled by the publication of open letters denouncing Wenders and the festival, and its news conferences have taken an increasingly political turn.
At a news conference to promote the comedy “Sunny Dancer,” the American actor Neil Patrick Harris was asked whether movies “could help fight the rise of fascism in Europe and the United States.” His response — “In a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now, as an artist, I’m interested in doing things that are apolitical” — prompted further online ire: Some people were upset by what they saw as an avoidant answer, while others said the question was unfair in such a forum.
Other filmmakers and actors, including the “Harry Potter” star Rupert Grint and Ethan Hawke, have been confronted with questions about Gaza or right-wing politics. Hawke, in Berlin to promote his film “The Weight,” said, “The last place you probably want to look for advice in your spiritual counsel is a bunch of jet-lagged, drunk artists talking about their film.”
Many of the pointed questions, including the one directed at Wenders, have been asked by Tilo Jung, 40, an independent journalist and podcaster who usually covers German politics, and who has seemed to relish his role as the festival’s provocateur.
In an interview, he said that he had decided to take an active role at Berlinale news conferences for the first time this year because of the rise of “fascist forces in Europe and in America” and because of what he saw as the festival’s hypocrisy on the issue of Gaza. He noted that in previous years the festival had made official statements in support of Ukraine and Iranian protesters, but had never showed solidarity with the Palestinians.
“There are still too few important artists” who “are involved politically and take a stand,” he said. “Of course, the institution here would prefer it if we discussed the stars and the films — but as I said, we are living in historic times, in which democracy is in danger.”
The festival’s director, Tricia Tuttle, has denounced the tone of the debate, noting in a lengthy statement midway through the festival that although politics had its place there, filmmakers have the right not “to speak on every political issue raised to them unless they want to.”
In an interview on Thursday, she said that the media attention paid to politics at the news conferences had taken away from coverage of the films themselves, which have included titles such as “Rose,” starring Sandra Hüller as a woman passing as a man in 17th-century Germany, and “Yellow Letters,” a searing drama about political repression in Turkey.
She noted that there were a “couple of instances” where “the questioner was waiting for particular answers” and “then they became sound bites that were used in viral ways.” She added: “It’s a delicate critical and media ecosystem around these films.”
Andreas Busche, a culture editor at Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper, argued in an interview that the debate around the festival and Israel had at times become dominated by “black-and-white thinking.” He said the Berlinale’s political stance should be measured not by statements from the organizers but by the “films it shows” and the breadth of “opinions of those it invites.”
The debate has been further stoked by the publication of an open letter by the Indian author Arundhati Roy, in which she canceled a planned appearance at the festival over Wenders’ comments, which she said were “a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity.” On Tuesday, over 80 former and current Berlinale participants, including Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem also published an open letter urging the event to condemn Israel over its conduct in Gaza.
Tuttle said one of the letter’s accusations — that the festival had censored artists who oppose Israel — was untrue. “I really wish some of the signatories whom I know,” she said, “had had conversations with me to find out what is happening.”
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