Arundhati Roy Withdraws from Berlin Film Festival Over 'Artistic Neutrality' Comments

Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize-winning novelist and political essayist, has withdrawn from the Berlin International Film Festival, saying she was “shocked and disgusted” by comments from members of the festival’s jury that film-makers should remain outside politics at a time of war in Gaza. Roy had been expected to attend a screening of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones , the 1989 film for which she wrote the screenplay, selected this year for the festival’s Classics section, an invitation she described as carrying unexpected emotional weight. “There was something sweet and wonderful about this for me,” she wrote of the film’s return nearly four decades later. Her decision not to travel to Berlin, announced on Friday, turns what is typically a celebratory archival showcase into the latest flashpoint in a widening cultural debate over how major European institutions respond to the conflict. In a written statement given to the news outlet The Wire , Roy said that calls for artistic neutrality in the face of mass violence amounted to “a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds in real time,” adding that this was precisely the moment when “artists, writers and film makers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.” The controversy began at a press conference on Thursday, when the festival jury, led by the German director Wim Wenders, was asked whether cinema could influence political outcomes. Wenders responded that while films might change people, they could not change political decisions, and that film-makers “have to stay out of politics,” describing artists as a counterweight rather than participants in political life. Don’t ask about Palestine at the Berlinale! Here’s my question to the jury about selective solidarity of the film festival with the people of Iran and Ukraine vs. Palestinians. Wim Wenders (jury president) actually said: “We have to stay out of politics” #Berlinale2026 pic.twitter.com/09SZOzk3Nf — Tilo Jung (@TiloJung) February 12, 2026 Roy’s statement was unequivocal in its language about Gaza. “Let me say this clearly,” she wrote. “What has happened in Gaza, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel.” She added that the violence was “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.” The remarks by the jury, she wrote, were “jaw-dropping,” not only for what they said about art but for what they declined to name. Although she said she had long been “profoundly disturbed” by Germany’s official position on Palestine, she had considered attending because “I have always received political solidarity when I have spoken to German audiences.” For Roy, who has spent decades moving between literature and political advocacy, the issue was not the autonomy of art but its moral horizon. “If the greatest film makers and artists of our time cannot stand up and say so,” she wrote, “they should know that history will judge them.” “With deep regret,” the statement concluded, “I must say that I will not be attending the Berlinale.” The episode has exposed a familiar divide in international cultural circles: whether art’s power lies in its distance from political structures or in its willingness to confront them directly. In recent years, festivals, museums and publishers across Europe have faced increasing scrutiny from artists over institutional responses to Gaza, Ukraine and other conflicts. Roy’s decision places her firmly in the latter camp — and ensures that a debate about aesthetics, responsibility and silence will follow this year’s Berlinale well beyond its opening week.