Arundhati Roy leaves the Berlin film festival after being “shocked” by the jury’s comments about Gaza.

Following what she called “unconscionable statements” made by the jury members regarding Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, Indian author Arundhati Roy has declared her intention to resign from the Berlin International Film Festival.

According to Roy’s article in The Wire, recent statements made by the Berlinale jury, including its chair, renowned filmmaker Wim Wenders, that “art should not be political” were “jaw-dropping.”

“It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time,” wrote Roy, the author of novels and nonfiction, including The God of Small Things. “I am shocked and disgusted,” Roy wrote, adding that she believed “artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop” the war in Gaza.

“Let me say this clearly: what has happened in Gaza, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel,” she wrote. The war 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.

A journalist questioned the jury members about the German government’s “support of the genocide in Gaza” and the “selective treatment of human rights” during a panel to kick off the festival on Thursday.

Filmmakers “have to stay out of politics,” retorted German filmmaker Wim Wenders, who chairs the festival’s seven-member jury.

“If we made movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the counterweight to politics. We are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians,” Wenders said.

Another juror, Polish film producer Ewa Puszczynska, stated that she felt this issue was “a bit unfair” because filmmakers “cannot be responsible” for whether governments support Israel or Palestine. Due to what they characterized as “McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine,” over 500 international artists, filmmakers, writers, and cultural workers demanded in 2024 that creatives cease collaborating with German-funded cultural institutions.

“Cultural institutions are surveilling social media, petitions, open letters and public statements for expressions of solidarity with Palestine in order to weed out cultural workers who do not echo Germany’s unequivocal support of Israel,” organisers of the initiative said.