Open letter from 80 artists and Ethan Hawke latest voices in political storm engulfing Berlin Film Festival

The Berlin Film Festival has been engulfed by a storm with two sides slanging strong words at each other about the intersection of art and politics.

But Ethan Hawke may have just carved out a middle ground to de-escalate the tension in a situation that has touched the likes of Wim Wenders, Tilda Swinton, Michelle Yeoh, Neil Patrick Harris, Javier Bardem and more.

The Berlin Film Festival has traditionally been more political than other programs, and jury president and director Wenders enraged many when he replied to a question about the German government, a major funder of the festival, and its support for Israel.

“We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics,” he said. “But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

His comments set off a firestorm, among the press corps at the festival and also online, where he was criticised for trying to separate art and politics. That included author Arundhati Roy, who pulled out of a scheduled appearance in Berlin. She called Wenders’ remarks “unconscionable”.

“It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time – when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it,” Roy said.

Last September, a UN commission of inquiry found Israel’s military action in Gaza constituted genocide. The Israeli government, which launched its campaign in response to the October 7 terrorist act committed by Hamas which saw 1200 Israelis killed and a further 251 taken hostage, rejected the report.

The death toll in Gaza is currently above 70,000 according to the Hamas-run health ministry, a figure that the Israeli military in January appeared to accept.

Next, Harris during a press conference for his film Sunny Dancer, and when pushed on the question of whether art should be apolitical and how films can help fight rising fascism in Europe and America, the former How I Met Your Mother actor replied, “As artists, I’m always interested in doing things that are apolitical because we’re all, as humans, wanting to connect in some way”.

Yeoh, similarly, tried to sidestep the issue when she said she wasn’t in a “position to really talk about the political situation in the US”.

After intense online backlash, the festival issued a statement. “People 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, and 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.”

The festival said that among the program’s 278 films were ones which dealt with genocide, sexual violence, corruption, abusive state power and colonialism.

It added, “Artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival’s previous or current practices, over which they have no control.”

Overnight, there was another twist in the saga when 80 actors and filmmakers, all former festival alumni, including Swinton, Bardem, Adam McKay, Peter Mullan, Tobias Menzies, Alison Oliver, Alia Shawkat, Brian Cox, Mike Leigh, Lukas Dhont and Nan Goldin, signed an open letter accusing the festival of censorship.

It read, “We are dismayed at the Berlinale’s involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the German state’s key role in enabling it.”

The open letter from the dissenting artists accused the Berlin Film Festival of previously silencing filmmakers who supported Palestine.

“Last year, filmmakers who spoke out for Palestinian life and liberty from the Berlinale stage reported being aggressively reprimanded by senior festival programmers. One filmmaker was reported to have been investigated by police.”

Amid the furore, Hawke, who was at the festival to open historical drama The Weight, was asked about the responsibility of high-profile celebrities to speak out on fascism.

Hawke opened by saying that “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 films”. According to Variety, that seemed to have defused the tension and elicited laughs and applause in the room.

But he went on to talk about the power of cinema to heal and that, “anything that fights fascism, I’m all for it”.

Later in the press conference, in response to a question about the open letter, Hawke said, “You know, people say, ‘actors shouldn’t talk about politics’, and things like that.

“I feel like the answer is the absolute inverse, that everybody should be – we’re all citizens of the world and all of us matter, all of us have a voice and everybody’s welcome to disagree. That’s part of the benefit of living in a free society.

“Yeah, we get microphones thrown in front of our faces, but it’s not because we’re telling people what to do. We’re just sharing art.

“We’re not some of the greatest minds in the world that try to make the planet live in peace.

“It seems to be very difficult for humanity, and the more we make it a priority to take care of all the children, that’s our job as grown-ups, to take care of the young people in our lives and make sure they have a good world to be born into and thrive into.

“We all have to think about how we all contribute to do the good we have the power to do.”