Hollywood actors among 81 to sign letter criticising Berlinale’s Gaza silence

Hollywood actors Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem and Brian Cox are among more than 80 leading film industry figures to sign an open letter, titled “We Are Dismayed”, condemning the silence of the Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) on Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its censoring of artists who speak out.

The letter comes on the same day as Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy announced her withdrawal from the festival over the same issue amidst comments by German director Wim Wenders against artists bringing up Gaza.

Berliale maintain silence

Other notable signatories include actors Angeliki Papoulia, Saleh Bakri, Tatiana Maslany, Peter Mullan and Tobias Menzies, and directors Mike Leigh, Lukas Dhont, Nan Goldin, Miguel Gomes, Adam McKay and Avi Mograbi. They say that they “expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity” in Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people.

The 2026 festival is currently underway. Festival head Tricia Tuttle put out a statement in which she backed Wenders:

Artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival’s previous or current practices over which they have no control.

The signatories of the open letter “fervently disagree” and insist that the “tide is changing across the international film world”. They also point out that the Berlinale has commented strongly about earlier “atrocities” in Iran and Ukraine and call for the festival to “fulfil its moral duty” to oppose Israel’s genocide and other crimes against the Palestinians. The full text reads:

Open Letter to the Berlinale — Feb. 17, 2026

We write as film workers, all of us past and current Berlinale participants, who expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity in the terrible violence that continues to be waged against Palestinians. We are dismayed at the Berlinale’s involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the German state’s key role in enabling it. As the Palestine Film Institute has stated, the festival has been “policing filmmakers alongside a continued commitment to collaborate with Federal Police on their investigations”.

Last year, filmmakers who spoke out for Palestinian life and liberty from the Berlinale stage reported being aggressively reprimanded by senior festival programmers. One filmmaker was reported to have been investigated by police, and Berlinale leadership falsely implied that the filmmaker’s moving speech – rooted in international law and solidarity – was “discriminatory”. As another filmmaker told Film Workers for Palestine about last year’s festival: “there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, of not being protected and of being persecuted, which I had never felt before at a film festival”. We stand with our colleagues in rejecting this institutional repression and anti-Palestinian racism.

We fervently disagree with the statement made by Berlinale 2026 jury president Wim Wenders that filmmaking is “the opposite of politics”. You cannot separate one from the other. We are deeply concerned that the German state-funded Berlinale is helping put into practice what Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion recently condemned as Germany’s misuse of draconian legislation “to restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights, chilling public participation and shrinking discourse in academia and the arts”. This is also what Ai Weiwei recently described as Germany “doing what they did in the 1930s” (agreeing with his interviewer who suggested to him that “it’s the same fascist impulse, just a different target”).

All of this at a time when we are learning horrifying new details about the 2,842 Palestinians “evaporated” by Israeli forces using internationally prohibited, U.S.-made thermal and thermobaric weapons. Despite abundant evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent, systematic atrocity crimes and ethnic cleansing, Germany continues to supply Israel with weapons used to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza.

In September 2025, more than 5,000 film workers, including major Hollywood stars, refused to work with industry organisations “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.

Featured image via the Canary