{"id":20515,"date":"2026-02-22T01:55:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T01:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/20515\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T01:55:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T01:55:07","slug":"berlin-film-festival-winners-condemn-israel-in-speeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/20515\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin Film Festival winners condemn Israel in speeches"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 76th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, which opened with a press conference in which the International Jury, headed by master director Wim Wenders, was blasted for refusing to condemn Israel, ended Saturday night with an awards ceremony in which multiple winners had harsh words about the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Abdallah Al-Khatib, who won the Best Feature Debut prize for his film Chronicles From the Siege, criticized the German government, saying it was complicit in Israel\u2019s conduct in the war against Hamas<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have told me to be careful\u2026 but I don\u2019t care,\u201d he said. \u201cYou are partners in the genocide of Gaza by Israel, but you choose not to care. Free Palestine from now until the end of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to say, \u201cI\u2019m happy to be here to get this prize, but I\u2019m Palestinian, so I have to use this moment to speak about Palestine. I was under a lot of pressure to participate in the Berlinale for one reason only, to stand here and say that Palestinians will be free and one day, we will have a great film festival in the middle of Gaza, in the middle of other Palestinian cities\u2026 Our festival will stand in solidarity with the people living under siege, under occupation and under dictatorships around the world. We will speak about politics before cinema. We will speak about resistance before art, about freedom before beauty, and about a human being before culture, the long-awaited day is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the persecution of the LGBT<\/a> community in Gaza, though, it is hard to imagine the film festival Al-Khatib envisioned welcoming such movies as What Will I Become?, a movie that explores \u201cthe vulnerability of their transmasculine community\u201d and that won the Amnesty International Award at the Berlinale.<\/p>\n

\"SOFIANESOFIANE ZERMANI, Abdallah Alkhatib, Taqiyeddine Issaad and Salah Issaad pose with the GWFF Best Feature Film Debut Award for \u201cChronicles From the Siege\u201d at the 76th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, February 21, 2026. (credit: REUTERS\/Nadja Wohlleben)<\/p>\n

Co-director Logan Rozos said, accepting the award, \u201cThank you to trans women all over the world for being the model and the blueprint for how to destabilize the patriarchy.\u201d It would seem that the \u201clong-awaited day\u201d that a film like Rozos\u2019s will be shown in Gaza will not be coming anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Few film festival winners mention Iran<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, many fewer prizewinners chose to criticize the Iranian government, where numerous filmmakers have been arrested, harassed, and killed<\/a> in recent weeks as they took part in recent demonstrations against the regime.<\/p>\n

Among the few who did mention Iran<\/a> was Emin Alper, whose movie, Salvation, set in the Kurdish region of Turkey, won the Grand Jury Prize. In his acceptance speech, he spoke about, \u201cPeople in Iran suffering under the most terrible tyranny,\u201d and also about \u201cthe genocide in Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The movie that won the Golden Bear, the festival\u2019s highest profile award, was German-Turkish filmmaker \u0130lker \u00c7atak’s Yellow Letters, about a playwright and actress engaged in political theater in Turkey who find themselves targeted by the state.<\/p>\n

At the awards ceremony, Wenders addressed the controversy sparked by his refusal to speak out politically at the beginning of the festival, by saying, \u201cThe language of cinema is empathetic, the language of social cinema is effective. The dignity and protection of human life – these are our causes as well. You do necessary and courageous work, but does it need to be in competition with ours? Do our voices need to clash?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Berlinale\u2019s director, Tricia Tuttle, also brought up the issue at the awards ceremony, saying, \u201cCriticism and speaking up is part of democracy, and so is disagreement. If this Berlinale has been emotionally charged, that\u2019s not a failure of the Berlinale, and it\u2019s not a failure of cinema. That\u2019s the Berlinale doing its job, and that\u2019s cinema doing its job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 76th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, which opened with a press conference in which the International…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[14181,1506,112,5435,1138,8357,190,2271],"class_list":["post-20515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-anti-israel","tag-award","tag-berlin","tag-cinema","tag-film","tag-film-festival","tag-germany","tag-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}