More than 80 current and former Berlinale attendees have signed an open letter to the Berlinale, condemning the festival’s “silence” on the Gaza conflict and “censorship” of vocal artists.
Actors Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Angeliki Papoulia, Saleh Bakri, Tatiana Maslany, Peter Mullan and Tobias Menzies, as well as directors Mike Leigh, Lucas DeHoot, Nan Goldin, Miguel Gomez, Adam McKay and Avi Mograbi are among the signatories of the letter, which says they “hope that the institutions of our industry will refuse to participate in the horrific violence that continues” against Palestinians. “
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The letter comes in the middle of the 2026 Berlin Film Festival, where politics has become a central theme, especially following comments made by jury president Wim Wenders at the opening press conference. Asked about Gaza’s support for Israel, as well as that of the German government (which provides much of the festival’s funding), he said “we should stay away from politics” and claimed filmmaking was “the opposite of politics.” The ensuing uproar prompted festival president Tricia Tuttle to issue a statement, in which she said: “Artists should not be expected to comment on all wider debates about the festival’s previous or current practices, as they have no control over these actions.”
In the open letter, the signatories claim they “strongly disagree” with Wenders’ views on filmmaking and politics. “You cannot separate one from the other,” they said, adding that “the tide is changing in the international film community,” noting that more than 5,000 film workers, including several Hollywood big names, refused to work with “complicit Israeli film companies and institutions.”
The letter noted that the Berlin Film Festival had made “clear statements” in the past about “atrocities” against the people of Iran and Ukraine.
“We call on the Berlinale to fulfill its moral responsibility to unequivocally oppose Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Palestinians, and to end once and for all its efforts to shield Israel from criticism and accountability,” the report concluded.
See the full letter and list of signers below.
Open letter to Berlin Film Festival – February 17, 2026
We write as filmmakers, both past and present Berlinale attendees, who want the institutions of our industry to refuse to participate in the horrific violence that continues against Palestinians. We are disappointed by the Berlinale’s involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the key role played by the German government in enabling this. As the Palestinian Film Institute puts it, the festival has been “regulating the filmmakers while remaining committed to cooperating with federal police in their investigations.”
Filmmakers who spoke out for Palestinian life and freedom on the Berlin Film Festival stage last year say they were harshly rebuked by the festival’s senior programmers. A filmmaker has reportedly been investigated by police after Berlin Film Festival leadership wrongly suggested that his moving speech rooted in international law and solidarity was “discriminatory”. As another filmmaker told Palestinian Filmworkers about last year’s festival: “There was a feeling of paranoia in the air, a feeling of being unprotected and persecuted, which I had never felt at a festival before”. We stand with our colleagues in rejecting this institutional repression and anti-Palestinian racism.
We strongly object to the statement by 2026 Berlin International Film Festival Jury President Wim Wenders that filmmaking is “the antithesis of politics”. You can’t separate one from the other. We are deeply concerned that Germany’s state-funded Berlinale is helping to implement what Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, recently condemned as Germany’s abuse of draconian legislation that “limits advocacy for Palestinian rights, stifles public participation and narrows the voice of academia and the arts”. This is also what Ai Weiwei recently described as Germany “doing what they did in the 1930s” (agreeing with his interviewer who put it to him that “it’s the same fascist impulse, just different goals”). All of this comes as we learn horrific new details about the Israeli military’s use of internationally banned U.S.-made thermal and thermobaric weapons to “vaporize” 2,842 Palestinians. Despite overwhelming evidence of Israel’s genocidal intentions, systematic atrocity crimes and ethnic cleansing, Germany continues to provide Israel with weapons used to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza.
The tide is changing in the international film industry. Many international film festivals have supported the cultural boycott of apartheid Israel, including the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival, the largest in the world, the Black Star Film Festival in the United States, and the Ghent Film Festival, the largest in Belgium. More than 5,000 film workers, including Hollywood and international celebrities, also announced their refusal to cooperate with complicit Israeli film companies and institutions.
Yet the Berlinale has so far failed to even meet the demands of its community, issuing a statement affirming Palestinian rights to life, dignity and freedom; condemning Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians; and pledging to uphold artists’ rights to speak without restrictions and support Palestinian human rights. This is the least it can and should do.
As the Palestinian Film Academy said, “We are appalled by the Berlin Film Festival’s silence on the genocide of Palestinians and its unwillingness to defend filmmakers’ freedom of speech and expression.” Just as the festival has made clear statements about atrocities against the people of Iran and Ukraine in the past, we call on the Berlinale to live up to its moral responsibility to unequivocally oppose Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and to completely cease participating in efforts to shield Israel from criticism and accountability.
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