The Berlin Film Festival continues to storm. On Thursday, Federal Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer called festival director Tricia Tuttle to a meeting about the future of the festival, which was reported by several international media outlets. This after one of the winners of this year’s festival, the Syrian-Palestinian director Abdallah al-Khatib, held up a Palestinian flag during the awards ceremony and criticized Germany as “complicit in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
According to information from the Bild newspaper on Wednesday, Wolfram Weimer wanted to fire the festival director. Within hours, much of the international film world came to her defense. Among them, a long list of important names have signed a petition in support of their leadership. The rebellion states, among other things, that artistic freedom and institutional independence are at stake. The more than 1,200 signatories include this year’s Gulbjörn winner Ilker Çatak as well as Sean Baker, Tilda Swinton and Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Ultimately, no crucial decisions were made at Thursday’s meeting. “Discussions about the future of the Berlinale will continue in the next few days,” a spokesman for Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer told the German Press Agency.
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