Gaza Debate Returns to Berlin’s Red Carpet
It looks like Berlin is getting the sequel nobody wanted. A polarized debate over the crisis in Gaza, of the sort that derailed last year’s Berlinale closing ceremony, is set to return to the Potsdamer Platz red carpet.
The fragile three-week cease-fire in Gaza looks close to breaking — Hamas, accusing Israel of violating parts of the cease-fire deal, have postponed the next release of hostages — and activists and demonstrators are already gearing up to take their proxy battles on the Middle East crisis to the streets of Berlin.
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Pro-Palestinian groups, including the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and Film Workers for Palestine, have called for a boycott of the Berlinale to protest the festival for not publicly condemning the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel’s war in Gaza, which has seen the mass bombing of civilian areas and widespread humanitarian suffering.
They have called out the festival for events at the 2024 Berlinale awards ceremony when numerous filmmakers — including the directors of best documentary film winner No Other Land — were publicly lambasted after making pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli statements on stage.
In notes posted on its website this week, the Berlinale made it clear that “wearing or displaying signs and symbols of national or political expression or solidarity” such as wearing a keffiyeh in support of Palestine, were “fully covered by freedom of expression laws” in Germany.
Those laws, however, do outlaw certain speech deemed to be hateful or discriminatory. Denial of the Holocaust is illegal in Germany, as are other forms of hate speech. More recently, the phrase “From the River to the Sea,” often used as a call for solidarity with the Palestinian cause, has been prosecuted in Berlin state courts as a call for the end of Israel.
A separate group of artists and filmmakers are planning to stand quietly on Berlin’s red carpet tonight to call for the release of David Cunio, an Israeli actor who was one of the Oct. 7 hostages kidnapped by Hamas. He is still being held hostage in Gaza. The group also published an open letter, titled “Bring David Home Now,” signed by more than a hundred artists and filmmakers, including German stars Iris Berben, Andrea Sawatzki and Heino Ferch; directors Simon Verhoeven and Marc Rothemund; producer Max Wiedemann; and The Hateful Eight actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, a vocal supporter of Israel.
Cunio is the subject of Tom Shoval’s documentary A Letter to David, which will have its world premiere in Berlin on Friday. Cunio starred in Shoval’s film The Youth, which won a special prize in Berlin in 2012.
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