Progressive except for Palestine: Berlinale 2025 and the politics of omission

Middle East Eye

10-03-2025

The 2024 Berlinale was the most memorable edition in the film festival's recent history for all the wrong reasons.
The initial outcry over the opening ceremony invitation for the far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD) gave way to protests over Germany's complicity in the war on Gaza.
Those protests notably ended with the infamous closing ceremony where solidarity with Palestine expressed by the award-winning filmmaker Yuval Abraham was deemed 'one-sided' and 'antisemitic' by various German officials, including minister of culture, Claudia Roth.
The film that incited the loudest uproar was No Other Land, the bastard child of the Berlinale and now Oscar-winning documentary feature, which depicted the Israeli state-sanctioned destruction of a small community in the occupied West Bank.
Roth's blatantly racist assertion that she only clapped for a speech by the Abraham and not his Palestinian co-director Basel Adra spiralled into a PR calamity.
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The 2024 edition marked the end of the tenure for the festival's Italian curator Carlo Chatrian.
Chatrian broke protocol when he released a statement from his personal account criticising the German political establishment for 'weaponising' antisemitic rhetoric for political gains.
The controversy of the 2024 edition did not end there. Roth never apologised for her comments. Instead, she doubled down, claiming that opinions expressed at the closing ceremony were 'not balanced' and that she intended to work closely with the festival's new director on the selection of juries and films.
This year's Berlinale has faced a widespread call for boycott for both its silence over Gaza and its handling of the backlash against pro-Palestinian filmmakers in the last edition.
Film criticism amid censorship
Paris-based Turkish critic Oyku Sofuoglu was one of the journalists who decided to boycott the festival after witnessing what had happened last year.
'Attending major film festivals represents an important source of income for many of us, so it's hard to ignore the utilitarian aspect of watching films and writing about them,' Sofuoglu told Middle East Eye.
'The Berlinale's silence in the face of this genocide is the loudest and most deafening silence imaginable in the film community.'
- Udi Aloni, Israeli filmmaker
'Especially considering how irrelevant the argument for 'the love of cinema' sounds here, I feel hopeless seeing my fellow colleagues in Berlin gluttonously consume films and hastily produce texts with equal speed and disdain, without a single thought for the hypocrisy unfolding right before their eyes.'
New York-based Israeli filmmaker and visual artist Udi Aloni echoed Sofuoglu's sentiment, writing on his Instagram account that 'The Berlinale's silence in the face of this genocide is the loudest and most deafening silence imaginable in the film community.'
Tilda Swinton, this year's recipient of the Honorary Golden Bear and longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, opted for a different strategy: she used the Berlinale as a platform to condemn ''state-perpetrated and internationally enabled genocide'.
She advocated for a cinema as 'state,' as 'a borderless realm... inherently inclusive, immune to efforts of occupation, colonisation, ownership or development of Riviera property,' in a not-so subtle reference to Trump's plans for Gaza.
For new Berlinale director, American programmer and ex-director of the London Film Festival, Tricia Tuttle, it was a baptism by fire, as she found herself in the crossfire of possibly the thorniest cultural debate in Europe's recent history.
Tuttle was tasked with the sensitive job of navigating the ruthless German culture sector while attempting to win back the artists and filmmakers antagonised by German politicians since 7 October.
Tuttle initially showed good faith by expressing support for the No Other Land team last November.
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'I don't consider the film, or statements made by co-directors at the Awards Ceremony of the Berlinale to be anti-Semitic,' a statement by Tuttle read.
'I also believe that discourse which suggests this film or its filmmakers are anti-Semitic creates danger for all of them, inside and outside of Germany, and it is important that we stand together and support them.'
In December, Tuttle admitted that the German position on Israel-Gaza debate is 'putting artists off' the Berlinale.
'People are worried about: 'Does it mean I won't be allowed to speak? Does it mean that I won't be allowed to express empathy or sympathy for the victims in Gaza? Does it mean that I, if I say this, then I also have to say this at the same time?'.
Tuttle was additionally opposed to the newly passed '"Antisemitism Resolution" which forbids a myriad of Palestinian symbols and gestures, emphasising that it's 'not a legally binding document and therefore doesn't have an impact on the way the Berlinale is run.'
In that sense, Tuttle was extending an olive branch to the battered Middle Eastern and pro-Palestinian community.
On the ground though, it was a starkly different story.
Progressive except for Palestine
Three Israeli films were featured in this year's edition, including two documentaries about the Israeli captives held by Palestinian fighters in Gaza.
By contrast, there was a solitary Palestinian film, Yalla Parkour, which had its world premiere last year at Saudi Arabia's Red Sea festival.
To put things into perspective, last year's edition presented a single Israeli film, the staunchly pacifist Shikun by Amos Gitai, a long-time ally to Palestinian artists, alongside No Other Land.
Film selections reflect the politics of their organisers and the Berlinale, the most political of all major European festivals, is no exception.
"For all festivals and all culture right now, the news agenda can often dominate the discourse," Tuttle said on 21 January.
'Shut up and fall in line': Israel, Palestine and the dawn of a new censorship in western art Read More »
"We really hope that the films that audiences are going to see over the next weeks of the festival are going to get people talking about the vibrancy of the art form itself and the films themselves.'
That did not turn out to be the case, ironically and precisely due to the highly politicised nature of the film selection.
From Bong Joon-ho's Trump parody Mickey 17 to Radu Jude's anti-capitalist morality tale Kontinental '25, it was virtually impossible to avoid politics despite of Tuttle's best efforts.
The politics on offer were predictably liberal and progressive, except for Palestine.
Support for Ukraine remained unwavering, with Tuttle posing behind the country's flag at the Timestamp premiere.
There was a sizeable number of LGBTQ films, anti-white supremacy films, anti-Russian films, pro-immigration films, anti-racism films, anti-patriarchy and feminist films, anti-Republican films, and anti-Assad films.
The Berlinale 2025 selection was a confection of all imaginable liberal politics - except for Palestine.
On Israeli captives
The first of the Israeli films, Batim (Houses) by the Ukraine-born Tel Aviv-based visual artist Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum is the most innocuous of the lot. Yael Eisenberg plays Sasha, a non-binary person who abruptly quits his job and sets off on a journey to visit his old family house and confronts his demons.
We soon realise that Sacha has been abused by her old mentor when he was still a girl.
Everyone in Sasha's circle, be it her family or her aloof schoolteacher, pushes her to sweep her bruising past under the rug.
The dual rejection of Sasha' Ukrainian and queer identities is emblematic of Israel's rejection of the different other, but there's little else about Israeli society in Tetelbaum's otherwise strikingly lensed and sensitive debut.
More politically charged was the American-produced documentary Holding Liat, Brandon Kramer's account of the abduction and consequent release of American-Israeli peace activist Liat Beinin-Atzili.
The bulk of the film, which is largely anchored from the point of Beinin-Atzili 's father, is set during her captivity, commencing on 7 October and concluding shortly after her release on 30 November.
A relative of the family, Kramer initially focuses on the anxiety, panic, and confusion that engulf the Beinin-Atzili household.
Only in the second half of the film, when the death toll in Gaza starts to mount, does the director expand the scope of the picture in a half-hearted attempt to provide a larger context for the conflict.
The end result is patchy to say the least. Beinin-Atzili's father, Yehuda, is a sympathetic, compassionate figure who, as time goes by, laments the unfulfilled socialist promises of the kibbutz and equal co-existence with Palestinians.
He mentions the 7,000 Palestinians held captive in Israeli prisons and remains vehemently anti-Netanyahu, as are most Israeli leftists.
His teenage grandsons appear to be less sympathetic, however, demanding retribution for their mother's abduction and father's murder.
Yehuda's brother, Stanford history professor Joel Beinin, emerges as the sole subject who is wholeheartedly with the Palestinian cause meanwhile.
He cites the Nakba and underlines the fact that the kibbutz were constructed on the ruins of three Palestinian villages. The kibbutz utopia, he implies, was nothing more than a pipe dream.
Throughout the course of the 50 days, Yehuda travels to the US, attends pro-Palestinian marches, confronts Netanyahu cronies and far-right Orthodox Jews, and briefly talks with a Palestinian activist who lost his family in Israeli army attacks.
Over the course of 75 minutes, the word Palestine is not uttered once. The family members, who remain in the kibbutz, never address the horrors next door
As it turns out, there is a limit to Beinin-Atzili's liberalism. In one scene, Yehuda pins part of the blame on the Palestinians, suggesting there's a price to be paid for the civilians who placed Hamas in power.
Liat, on the other hand, admits that she was treated well by her Hamas captors who told her at some point that the Jews will be banished from Palestine.
This statement is left hanging loose without a commentary. Neither Liat nor Kramer elucidates how the view was born and fostered.
Near the end of the film, Liat stresses that nothing justifies the Israeli rampage in Gaza; that nothing could validate starving people to death. 'At the same time, you can't just go around invading houses and killing people,' she says.
This flip-flopping could be regarded as part of Liat's complex thought-process through her experience of captivity.
But herein lies the responsibility of the filmmaker to provide a proper framework for their political discourse, but one would be hard-pressed to find one in Holding Liat, an undeniably sincere film ultimately failed by its reluctance to adopt a political stance.
There is a legitimate reasoning behind the selection of Liat, which earned the best documentary award.
The same cannot be said of A Letter to David, Tom Shoval's ruminating essay on the capture of actor David Cunio on 7 October, who is yet to be released by Hamas.
Like Liat, A Letter to David zeros on the actor's family members who remain emotionally paralysed by their son's unknown fate.
Tom Shoval 'A Letter to David' is about the capture of David Cunio by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023 (AFP/John Macdougall)
Home videos of David along with testimonials detailing the invasion and subsequent destruction of their house are punctuated with Shoval's voiceover, which takes the form of a personal letter to his former collaborator.
Over the course of 75 minutes, the word Palestine is not uttered once. The family members, who remain in the kibbutz, never address the horrors next door; they never spare a thought to the carnage unfolding a few kilometres away from them.
In the most unintentionally shocking, most morally reprehensible moment of any film I saw this year, David's mother stands casually in her balcony, calmly smoking a cigarette as the sound of Israeli shelling of Gaza is heard in the background.
Holding Liat is not devoid of shortcomings, but at least it shows some humanity to Palestinian victims.
David does not, casting the Palestinians in the role of the faceless barbaric perpetrators responsible for the robbed innocence of the actor and his family.
Token Palestinian offering
In the midst of this Israeli wave, Yalla Parkour, the debut feature by Nablus-born Washington, DC-based Areeb Zuaiter, came off as the token Palestinian film in the selection.
Years in the making, Yalla Parkour follows Ahmad Matar, an affable Parkour athlete from Gaza dreaming of a better and freer life away from his hometown.
Ahmad is a daredevil and a gifted athlete with remarkable agility honed by years of relentless practice.
Hailing from a humble background and stranded in a place with little prospects, Ahmad treats the video camera as a vehicle to illustrate his talents to the world and as a potential ticket out of Gaza.
The camera is his sole means of freedom: the borderless realm where he can realize his full potential; the realm where he can be anyone he wants to be.
The Berlinale's position towards Russia in comparison to Israel has one indisputable interpretation: That Israeli actions in Gaza are more morally justifiable than Russia's
For Palestinians in Gazan like Ahmad, the camera is their only viable tool of defiance.
The narrative of Yalla Parkour consists of two layers: Ahmad's painful and lengthy efforts to leave Gaza, and the director's endeavour in reconnecting with her Palestinian roots and discovering her buried identity.
The two strands never mesh together, with the latter transpiring to be superfluous, unconvincing, and forced.
Zuaiter fails to convey the full essence of Ahmad. Zuaiter's hagiographic, one-dimensional presentation of her protagonist leaves off his loves, his weaknesses, his relationships, and even his political convictions. The only facet of Ahmad put on display is his determination to leave.
The importance of Yalla Parkour lies in its sheer dramatisation of an ordinary young Gazan with modest dreams and hopes quashed by the invisible and unnamed Israeli occupation.
Zuaiter documents the inhumane daily impediments Ahmad and his friends casually experience, from the impossibility of obtaining a Schengen visa to the agony of getting the coveted pass through the Rafah border; impediments Liat and Cunio are privileged enough not to experience.
At the premiere of A Letter to David, a vigil was held for Cunio that was attended by Tuttle and a host of German artists and filmmakers.
Nearly half the crew of Yalla Parkour, as the credits reveal, were killed by Israeli strikes after 7 October.
No vigil was held for them; the Palestinian victims did not receive the same treatment by the festival.
The objection on the inclusion of Israeli films is related to one blaring reality: the ongoing bar on Russian films.
All major European and American fests have banned Russian filmmakers and journalists since the outset of the war in 2022. This was a moral stance the West had taken against Putin's aggression. No one demanded the festivals to be 'more balanced'; no one pressed for the importance of presenting 'the perspective of the other side'.
The Berlinale's position towards Russia in comparison to Israel has one indisputable interpretation: that Israeli actions in Gaza are more morally justifiable than Russia's.
Few, including this writer, wouldn't have had qualms over the inclusion of Israeli films had Russian movies been also admitted.
But by welcoming back Israeli cinema with arms wide open after the murder of more than 49,000 Palestinians, after the destruction of Gaza, after the detention of thousands of Palestinians who have not received a fraction of the attention afforded to Beinin-Atzili and Cunio, the Berlinale and its new management have exposed their moral selectiveness.
The Berlin Film Fest was held from 13 to 23 February