2024-02-22 20:58:00
The 74th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival had the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine as one of its protagonists. The event is one of the most important in cinematographic matters and since the eyes of the world were going to be on it, workers, filmmakers and the general public took the opportunity to demand a more forceful stance from Germany for peace.
During the inauguration, posters were seen saying “Free Gaza” On the red carpet, however, the opening gala on February 15 was held without interruptions.
While Sunday some 50 protesters broke into the European Film Market (EFM) to demand Palestineaccording to the portal Deadline. This film market is linked to the Berlinale, but, unlike the festival’s red carpet, the business platform is reserved for film industry professionals and is therefore not known to the public.
At the opening of the event, the directors of the Berlinale, Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, They expressed their solidarity with all the victims of the crises in the Middle East and asked that “the suffering of all be recognized and that our program opens different perspectives on the complexity of the world.”
However, for more than 60 Berlinale participants, including curators of several sections of the festival, stated that the statement lacked forcefulness. “We join a global solidarity movement to demand a immediate ceasefire and call for the release of all hostages,” they said in a letter. “As the world witnesses an unacceptable loss of civilian life in Gaza, including those of journalists, artists and film workers, as well as the destruction of a heritage unique cultural, we need stronger institutional positions“, highlighted.
More than 100 participants of the section Forum Expanded (Expanded Forum) of the festival, one of the most experimental categories of the Berlinale, supported four colleagues who withdrew their productions from the section before the event.
The more than 100 signatories of this letter showed their support for the four artists who explained on Instagram that their decision was in solidarity with the “Strike Germany” movement, which aims to boycott cultural institutions sponsored by the German Government. The measure is due to the country’s resistance to request a ceasefire.
Israelis question their country’s government
The Israeli director Amos Gitai premiered his new film at the Berlinale, Shikunbased on the play Rhino by Eugene Ionesco, from 1959. This absurd fable talks about the soppressive rise of fascism before World War II. The director developed his project when his country was experiencing intense protests against the legal reform of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which his opponents see as an attack on the country’s democracy.
Included in the film are quotes from some of the world’s great thinkers, from Umberto Eco even Robert Musil, even concludes with a quote from the poem “Think of Others”, words of compassion written by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008).
For Gitai, his country is “hostage to Netanyahu’s most right-wing coalition” and believes that the prime minister “could destroy Israel,” as he told DW.
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“As it does not have any ethical restrictions, rIt brought together the worst components of Israeli society: the ultra-nationalist provocateurs, racists, extremists, the ultra-Orthodox reactionaries who are against women, against the LGBTIQ community. So he is an important component of this tragedy,” she said.
German responsibility in the request for peace
Another of the films that address the Middle East conflict at the Berlin festival is No Other Land, directed by a Palestinian-Israeli collective. It is a documentary that shows how Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist and one of the co-directors of the film, has been fighting for years in his village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where houses are being demolished and its inhabitants expelled.
He, together with the Israeli journalist, Yuval Abraham, who became an activist after learning the Arabic language and witnessing the injustice of the Israeli occupation, denounce Israel’s advance.
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“I know that the Germans feel very guilty about what happened in World War II,” Abraham told DW, who said that several of his relatives were murdered during the Holocaust. “Do not use this guilt as a weapon now and do not refuse to call for a ceasefire. Use it to help us reach a political solution! Use it to pressure the State of Israel to end the occupation,” said the Israeli documentary filmmaker.
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