Arundhati Roy quits Berlin film festival after jury chief’s ‘unconscionable’ Gaza remarks

Booker winner says jury’s argument that art shouldn’t be political is ‘jaw-dropping’

Booker-winning author Arundhati Roy has withdrawn from the Berlin International Film Festival after jury president Wim Wenders said filmmakers should “stay out of politics” when asked about Israel’s war on Gaza.

Roy, who was due to attend a screening of a restored version of her 1989 film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, said she was “shocked and disgusted” by remarks made during a press conference at the festival’s opening on Thursday.

When a reporter asked the jury members for their views on the German government’s “support of the genocide in Gaza” and the festival’s “selective treatment of human rights” issues by speaking out about Ukraine and Iran but not Palestine, Wenders, the chair of the seven-member jury, responded that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics”.

In a statement, Roy called the comments “unconscionable” and said she had decided to withdraw “with deep regret”.

“To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping,” the novelist said. “It’s 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 film-makers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”

Arundhati Roy participates in a protest at the Press Club of India in Delhi in 2023 (AP)

Roy, who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things, said that “what has happened in Gaza, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel”.

“It is supported and funded by the governments of the United States and Germany, as well as several other countries in Europe, which makes them complicit in the crime,” she added. “If the greatest filmmakers and artists of our time cannot stand up and say so, they should know that history will judge them.”

Roy has long been an outspoken critic of governments in India and abroad and has repeatedly voiced support for the Palestinian cause.

The Berlin festival, commonly known as the Berlinale, is partly funded by the German government. At the same press conference, a jury member, Ewa Puszczyńska, said it was “a bit unfair” to expect the jury to take a stance on the issue.

The festival said it “respected the decision” even though Roy’s presence “would have enriched the festival discourse”.

A view of the historic Pasha Palace in Gaza City after it was struck by an Israeli airstrike (AP)

Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has killed over 71,000 Palestinians so far, reduced the besieged territory to rubble and displaced most of its 2.1 million people. The war began after about 1,200 people were killed during a Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023.

A few months into the war, Berlinale was drawn into a controversy after the festival’s documentary award went to No Other Land, a film about the dispossession of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

German officials at the time criticised “one-sided” remarks made about Gaza by the directors of the film and others at the awards ceremony.