Dora Leu and Flavia Dima were the Films in Frame correspondents at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. From the scene, they noted that there is a palpable sense of angst in the industry, caused by the situation in Palestine and the lack of response from film institutions, in a Germany that refuses to react to the massacre in Gaza – culminating in one of the most controversial award ceremonies in the Berlinale history. The following discussion outlines an attempt to process this experience, to (re-)assess one’s status as critics amid this context, as well as how cinema and its structures are reacting to a global political crisis. (For other perspectives that further address and examine the events at this year’s festival, our colleagues also recommend the articles by critics Erika Balsom and Devika Girish in Film Comment).

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Flavia: What we seek with this text is to try to process together what happened at this year’s Berlinale, how we feel about these particular events, and our presence at this edition, the main reason being the festival’s failure to express a clear viewpoint on the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza and to call for a ceasefire. All they expressed in this regard before the closing ceremony was a very vague and relative “acknowledgment” of the “suffering” on both sides of the conflict, without delving into the specifics of the Palestinian situation (except for the “Tiny House” project, a small space where some 5 people could discuss the conflict, which has been criticized for being too less of an effort) – nothing about the massive number of casualties caused by Israel’s military offensive (over 30,000 deaths, mostly civilians).

Dora: More than the fact that the festival failed to express such a position, I think we should also discuss these events that started with the awards ceremony and which concern the reactions afterwards, including the press release that came out the day after the gala, but also the reactions caused by that “hacking” on Panorama’s Instagram page, which explicitly condemned Israel’s actions and led to the official position that criminal investigations are being conducted and culprits are being sought. The post read, “Genocide is genocide. We are all complicit. In response to the pro-Palestine actions that targeted Berlinale 2024, and in light of the extreme rise of the far-right in Germany, we acknowledge that our silence makes us complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. […] We are raising our voice to join the millions around the world who demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and we urge other cultural institutions in Germany to do the same.” To me it is very telling that the festival reacted so quickly, wanting to distance themselves and remove those views, when in the week before, their views were evasive. So, besides failing to take a stance, which was much needed, I think what is even more worrying are these statements that relativize and distort the reality of the war, that accuse artists who criticise Israel of anti-Semitism, which stem from both official positions and the reactions of German politicians present at the ceremony, who have warned, like the mayor of Berlin, that the new leadership should not allow such things to happen again. The fact that the Ministry of Culture had to issue a statement specifying that the Minister of Culture, Claudia Roth, who was present at the closing ceremony, only applauded the Israeli part of the directorial duo present on stage for No Other Land is simply Kafkaesque. Allow me to quote a few things Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham said in their speech. “It is very hard for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza,” said Adra. “In two days, we will go back to a land where we are not equal. I am living under civilian law, and Basel is under military law. We live 30 minutes from each other, but I have voting rights, and Basel does not have voting rights. I am free to move where I want in this country. Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end,” said Abraham, who is also working as an Israeli journalist.

Flavia: Neither in that press release nor in the time that has passed since its publication, the festival has not shown any signs of standing up for its own artists, i.e. both the awarded filmmakers and the jurors who expressed pro-Palestine stands during the closing ceremony – filmmakers who were targets of extensive attacks in the press and on social media, instigated mainly by representatives of the German state, subjected to unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism. And the festival did not defend them, which is extremely hard to accept, as a critic and worker in this industry. Moreover, this refusal to defend them from these attacks and accusations extends, de facto, to all artists and professionals (including Berlinale workers and Talents alumni) who have signed various open letters addressed to the festival demanding a firmer stance. As such, there are practically thousands of people who are affected by this very cowardly decision by the festival not to stand with those without whom the Berlinale, essentially, cannot happen. And that was a major disappointment for me. Not to mention the controversy about the invitations sent to members of the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland party.

Dora: For me, the disappointment was the annihilation of this hope I had going to Berlin, thinking that the festival is such a large and diverse organisation that there must be people in their team who do not agree with this silence. After all, the festival, within its programme, as you said, had films and even winners that called for peace and reminded of what is happening now in Palestine. This hope of diversity, of opinions, was crushed on the spot; the festival showed me through these actions that there is, in fact, an official position, but a cowardly one, which can be easily manipulated to relativise the situation – and that diversity is easily stifled.

Flavia: Somehow, in my naivety, I initially thought they were just trying to be cautious – given the political climate in Germany. I knew that in the last few months, there had been all these incidents where artists – from all spheres of German culture (and many of whom are part of the Jewish community!) – who expressed solidarity with Palestine were sanctioned by the German state by withdrawing funds/grants, invitations, or awards, as well as through social ostracism. (See the Archive of Silence, which collects these cases – from Adania Shibli and Mascha Geesen to people on the team of the Oberhausen Film Festival.) I thought the Berlinale was just self-censoring, that these conditions made it impossible for them to take a firm stand. Acts of self-censorship I also happened to notice during the festival. There were many public screenings in the Forum and Forum Expanded sections where filmmakers seemed to want to say something about Palestine, but they didn’t speak openly, instead referring to the open letters they had signed. They seemed uncomfortable with advocating their views publicly.

Dora: Regarding my decision to go to the Berlinale, I would like to point out the motivation behind it – I was aware of Strike Germany, this initiative condemning official censorship in the German cultural environment. As I said in my postcards, a lot of people came to the festival due to being the last edition with Carlo Chatrian as the artistic director and believing that things might get worse from now on. This year’s Berlinale would have been, let’s say, a final act of cinephile resistance among today’s major festivals and against these new forms of turning festivals into places that have less to do with cinema, risking to become heavily state-regulated institutions. To that, I would also add the economic factor, which for me was a very important one. I don’t necessarily have other sources of income apart from my work as a film critic, and as many other critics say – your presence at major festivals is inevitable, given that they are a more than important source to ensure your livelihood for a good part of the year. Films from Cannes, Berlin, and so on are the most visible and have the most consistent run.

On the other hand, for me, the Berlinale is also the only festival I can really afford financially because, well, plane tickets are cheap, accommodation is cheaper than other major festivals, like Venice or Cannes, and even when it comes to smaller festivals (which not many people believe are worth covering). Moreover, for a critic like me, specialising in Asian cinema, it was very important to attend the festival as I wouldn’t have access to the directors I’m interested in or to such titles otherwise – titles that most definitely won’t be distributed in Romania, and may not reach many other festivals in Europe either. That was quite a determining factor in my decision – which, as I’ve said before, I now regret – to go to Berlin. I don’t think it was worth it morally, either personally or professionally.

Flavia: I feel you – I’m also going through all the things you describe very accurately, regarding economic and cultural access. More than that, I simply don’t want to have another experience like this year’s, where everything felt so tense, so suffocating. At the end of the day, attending a festival is already a very demanding experience: physically, emotionally, cognitively – on all levels. Goodness, I never imagined I’d see two critics slapping each other at the Arsenal cinema, or people crying due to stress at press screenings (and not just once)! Sometimes it’s brutally hard to work from 9 in the morning until midnight, even if it’s only for 10 days. It’s something that would be seen as beyond abnormal in many other fields of work. And if you add that pressure, yes, you’re going to have a lot of people completely exhausted, disillusioned, burned out. That’s how I’ve felt since I got home, and it’s been over three weeks.

Dora: It also made me doubt whether I still want to have this profession, regardless of my love for cinema, regardless of my connection to film. I’ve come to seriously ask myself: Is it really worth it? Why? Why struggle, physically and morally, to exist in this space, which makes me give in or have to compromise? Are there any other alternatives to how I could exist in the world of film?

Flavia: I completely empathize with what you’re saying: I’ve constantly had this sort of negotiation, even internal split. I really wanted to believe that the Berlinale – because it’s an international forum, and because Palestinian films had been invited not only this year, but also over time at the festival, and especially because of the festival’s historical position on all sorts of other social conflicts and wars – was engaging in self-censorship, but it’s exactly as you said earlier. With that press release, they expressed a very clear position, which legitimizes these false accusations of anti-Semitism, which, in turn, creates a climate in Germany where not only the suppression of voices advocating for the Palestinian cause is legitimized, but at the same time, the turning of a blind eye to what has been claimed (by South Africa) and admitted for investigation by the ICJ as a possible genocide.

Dora: I felt that this stance that came only at the end was very opportunistic. Rather than self-censorship, for the reasons you mentioned, it seemed to me to be a deliberate strategy, in which these positions came only after the business part had ended successfully and after almost everyone had already left Berlin and couldn’t represent a problem anymore.

Somehow, I think they speculated this (naive) hope we critics and filmmakers had, that self-censorship is not automatically a validation of the relativist discourse, that perhaps the lack of a position doesn’t mean validation of the worst position, and as soon as all ended, it was very easy for the festival to succumb to the pressures to ultimately satisfy the government’s position. I was very annoyed by this situation in which I wouldn’t have been able to participate in the protests that probably would have taken place at least in front of the Palast if these cowardly statements had been openly made earlier.

Flavia: Yes, I could see that too: major reactions from the community, protests, filmmakers withdrawing their films, or even exhibition stands from the European Film Market. By the way, the market is the most important component if we’re talking about a boycott of the festival. because that’s where things really hurt, that’s where the money is made. There would have been some very tangible consequences. And among critics – see the excellent articles by Erika Balsom and Devika Girish in Film Comment. We are the ones who sustain the prestige of this environment, we are the ones who validate it through our work – so, all the more so, our work is completely invalidated when an institution reacts this way. I would also like to mention the Oberhausen festival, which suspended its collaboration with employees/curators who criticized the festival director for having a racist and Islamophobic stance in an open letter signed by nearly 2000 film professionals from around the world. And which I believe should, in turn, be boycotted.

In recent weeks, critics have also recalled the canceled edition of the Berlinale in 1970, which fell apart in the middle of the festival over a dispute regarding Michael Verhoeven’s o.k. Basically, the jury led by director George Stevens proclaimed that this was an anti-American propaganda film and refused to consider it for the Golden Bear, eliminating it from the competition by a vote of 7 to 2. The situation came to light through the intervention of Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev, who made it known to the press – and all the scandal that ensued, with multiple filmmakers pulling their films from the competition, protests, and so on, led to the cancellation of the entire festival.

We are dealing once again, just like in the late ’60s, with an invasion from totally asymmetrical positions of a very vulnerable population, which doesn’t have the power to defend itself against a military force that is far superior, technologically and militarily speaking – and that led to a widespread international movement of support, especially in the artistic milieu. In that sense, I see a very clear equivalence between Vietnam and Palestine in terms of the international response to this crisis. So it was fully expected that this would also happen in the artistic sphere. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fact that we, those of us born in the post-1968, post-hippie generations, have this tendency to fetishize representations of anti-war resistance. What comes to mind, for example, is the famous moment at the Oscars (considering also Jonathan Glazer’s speech after receiving the award for Best International Feature) when Marlon Brando asked Sacheen Littlefeather to pick up his statuette and give a speech about the resistance at Wounded Knee. We fetishize these moments from pop culture imagery, these moments of resistance from the past, but when they actually happen before our eyes, when they deal with current events, we are unable to make decisions. Institutionally, especially.

Dora: Speaking of the Oscars, and I hope this isn’t necessarily a digression, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Vanessa Redgrave’s acceptance speech in 1978 when she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Julia. It’s the most honourable moment I’ve ever heard, in the way she decries censorship on filmmakers and the exact same discourse that is repeated today, regarding the instrumentalisation of anti-Semitism to excuse oppression and crimes against Palestinians. Her speech mentions all these pressures that were exerted against her for the roles she had in various productions (like The Palestinian) and for her own pro-Palestine stances at the time. Speaking of fetishizing certain acts of protest, I think it seems as if they are already a thing of the past. As it is often said, the season of politics is over. I think it’s obvious that we’ve gotten used to living in this, shall we say, depoliticized complacency where, as you said, all these issues are movie subjects, they’re not necessarily realities we’re dealing with. Even so, I would like to point out that we have many filmmakers who have fought and continue to fight, through film, to provide pieces of truth about Palestine. But as an audience, I think we still look at these things from a distance in a way that, I don’t know, scares me. To conclude on the subject of the Oscars, I can’t help but refer to Glazer’s statements at the recent Oscars, which were also heavily criticised. Glazer, a Jewish man himself, is very specific about how he opposes this instrumentalization of the Holocaust and its identity to justify murder – and he refuses to have his film used in this way.

Flavia: Glazer’s speech was a huge act of courage and I think it will go down in history. His statement was so carefully worded (the fact that he insisted on reading it shows that) and also took into account the victims of October 7th – so, obviously, those who attacked him (including László Nemes, unfortunately) resorted to the most primitive method: taking his statements out of context and distorting their meaning. Although Glazer was the only one to say something on stage, I would also point to the many artists who wore Artists4Ceasefire pins, such as Mark Ruffalo or Billie Eilish, or the team of Anatomy of a Fall, who had Palestinian flag pins.

This reminds me of how cinema, at large, treats the situation in Palestine, and how it reflects it. If I were to think of its most prominent representations (far from being the only ones, just the most visible) in the festival sphere, I’d say that those films were Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven and Nadav Lapid’s two latest films, Synonyms and Ahed’s Knee, whose protagonists are in a conflicted relationship with their own identity as Israelis, which has to do with the militarization of society in Synonyms, and the occupation in Ahed’s Knee. At the same time, somehow, these films have a rather abstract discourse about these themes. Sure, one can understand what they’re hinting at, but I think that a viewer who is not necessarily familiar with the situation in Israel and Palestine wouldn’t understand all the subtleties.

Beyond that, it seems to me that the subject has been largely, if you will, “ghettoized” in documentary film festivals, which unfortunately are often built around, and marketed to a niche audience. A niche even within the film industry. And that has long been a problem. Locally, One World Romania has done the most in this respect – it has popularised films on the subject, including historical representations, in retrospectives such as those dedicated to filmmakers like Jocelyne Saab (recently revived by F-Sides), Michel Khleifi and Avi Mograbi.

Dora: I would also highlight the Eyal Sivan retrospective, coming up this year.

Flavia: Speaking of documentary films, I think we should also mention the incidents at IDFA. There, things happened at the very beginning of the festival, thanks to that intervention by pro-Palestinian activists during the opening ceremony, giving way to a broad round of (sometimes contradictory) stances from the festival, film withdrawals, and on-site discussions – automatically making this an ongoing conversation, carried out throughout the festival.

Dora: My take on the issue at IDFA is very much related to its status as a documentary film festival, which in the past has taken very firm stances on issues of free expression and the representation of all these subjects. Even though, as you said, in many other film festivals this kind of subject matter has worked as keywords or a form of self-flattery, to show they’re paying attention to these issues. It felt like exactly that kind of guilt when you’re loudly proclaiming that you support certain values, but when push comes to shove, you no longer support them for various reasons – which is what happened at the Berlinale as well. The gesture seems all the more shameful since the festival, like last year in its retrospective dedicated to Iran, stood up for certain values, right?

Flavia: Exactly. The cause of Iranian filmmakers (in fact, the Iranian cause itself) has long been embraced by the Berlinale (see, for example, the case of politically persecuted filmmaker Jafar Panahi, where the festival has been a vocal advocate for him for over a decade) – and that was evident at this edition too, when the co-directors of My Favourite Cake were not allowed to leave the country to come to the festival to present the film.

Dora: I still somehow suspect that this support is very performative – and maybe it’s my preconceptions about the German cultural sector, especially Berlin, where it seems to me that inclusivity is actually very performative and easily falls apart at the first pressures from outside. Personally, I see it as an inclusivity that creates even more otherness rather than absorbing it in a way that is functional, human. This too is a form of self-flattery, which is keen to show how progressive it is.

Returning to IDFA, it was obvious that there were some major rifts between the personal views of festival workers and the official positions. So I thought that this should also be the case at the Berlinale, considering that most people I know have different opinions than the official silence. And these opinions cannot be expressed because there is a general fear of losing sponsors, funding, and other things. But honestly, I don’t know how to process the fact that everyone is so afraid these days of losing funding. Realistically speaking, all cultural initiatives have lost financial support from many organisations and are losing more and more. Another problem is if you break your principles and how much you break them to access that funding. This whole system in which festivals (and not just festivals) operate today, I find it quite sickening. I think more and more initiatives are falling into this situation where they can no longer take open positions because they are dependent on the positions of others. I read a tweet that I thought pointed out the problem extremely well: if you’re a festival that can’t exist without resorting to funds that are directly opposed to the values you promote, then why do you exist?

Flavia: Then there’s also the case of SXSW, where more than 80 artists pulled out of the lineup after it emerged that the Texas festival is sponsored by some of the biggest weapons and military technology companies in the United States, some of which are indirectly involved in the war in Gaza. And that says something about the accumulation of resources, in the most pragmatic sense of the term. Typically, the uncompromising and clear stances we’ve seen are much rather coming from independent artists who, in the grand scheme of things, are not in a very good financial position within the industry; quite the contrary.

And so I arrive at the most worrying statement (in my view) post-Berlinale, that of the mayor of Berlin, who told the festival “to make sure that such incidents do not happen again”. For me, this is symptomatic of a world in an unprecedented year of elections, where cultural funds are aggressively cut around the world, and the reasons for these cuts are almost always political. It’s a context where we are witnessing (more or less) open calls for the censorship of events and institutions, which in turn end up censoring the artists they depend on. But it’s also a context where major events can also simply disappear – see the case of the Mar del Plata festival, which might not happen again due to the unilateral decisions of the Milei administration, which seeks to defund INCAA, the Argentine Film Institute. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me, considering that the festival, at last year’s edition, took a firm anti-Milei stance – and I see what is happening to the festival now also as a form of punishment, of direct political repression.

We are at a very scary point where film festivals and art festivals in general, as well as artists, organizers, cultural managers, curators and critics are subject to forms of political censorship. And that worries me, especially as someone who grew up in the years that immediately followed the fall of a dictatorship, who witnessed all the social traumas that came as a direct consequence of the suppression of the right to free speech. It makes me wonder what things will look like in the next few years.

Dora: I’m going to say something very impressionistic, about what lingers on in the air. My knees froze when I saw a policeman tearing a pro-Palestine poster off a pole near Palast. I had this very strong feeling on the streets of Berlin; it’s not that I was afraid to speak out or that I didn’t have the courage to participate in a protest, but this image stuck in my mind. For me, this gesture said a lot not about freedom of expression, but about something deeper. I was simply frightened by the pleasure with which that poster was torn down. I had this feeling that I was witnessing the beginning of something that I don’t know exactly where it will lead, but it certainly won’t be a good thing. At the same time, I felt that there were many people at the festival who condemned what has all the data of a genocide – especially with these vigils organized by Film Workers For Palestine every day in Potsdamer Platz.

I felt the existence of all these people taking a firm stand and being there. It might also come as impressionistic, but I also felt it in the room when attending the screening of Silenced Voices, a documentary in the Forum Expanded section, which talks about the situation of ethnic Koreans in Japan. There is a moment in the film that speaks exactly with these words, about how the word genocide is being removed from historical discourse. And when the words appeared on the screen, there was a sigh in the room, knowing how they relate to the current context.

If at IDFA there was slightly more room for discussion, I can’t help but wonder, “Why couldn’t it happen at the Berlinale as well?” Still, the filmmakers’ statements at the closing gala are practically stances taken on stage (and there were others at the Q&As), which, as we see, posed a lot of problems precisely because they were expressed on stage. But they came up at the closing gala – I think that’s the most schizoid moment of the whole festival, and that’s why I keep coming back to it. How can you officially state that you wish your awarded filmmakers had expressed themselves differently about their films? How can you absolve yourself of any responsibility for these awards, given that you also contribute to their awarding (even if the jury is independent) by simply the fact that the films are part of the festival? I find this system very cowardly because then the awards come as another flaunting proof to temporarily confirm humanity and those values that are “great” to promote. The values celebrated by the awards are simply invalidated by these subsequent statements as if there is no connection to the festival’s involvement in selecting these films.

Flavia: The Main Competition jury made no statement to this effect, but the GWFF Best First Feature Award jury took a stand with very strong statements from Eliza Hittman (who, like Jonathan Glazer, said she takes her Jewish identity into account when condemning the violence in Gaza) and Andrea Picard, as well as Katrina Pors’ costume. Then we have the very brave act of the entire documentary jury. Director Verena Paravel was clearly the most uncompromising and straightforward of them all, not mincing any words when she described what is happening in Palestine, and Abbas Fahdel also delivered a poignant speech. I would also point out the intervention of director Thomas Heise – who directed a masterpiece that is (also) about the Holocaust, Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit, and who, as a German citizen, really took on the potential risk of compromising his future projects with these statements, considering how the German state has been using the withdrawal of funding as a tool of censorship. Berlinale’s refusal to defend its artists also strikes me in this respect – because the jurors are guests of honor at a festival. How can you not defend them?

Still, it should be mentioned that the Forum Expanded team – a section from which three filmmakers withdrew their projects in protest: Ayo Tsalithaba, Suneil Sanzgiri, and John Greyson – is the only one to have made a call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which they read out on the first day of screenings. But even that speaks to the internal hierarchies that are inherent to a festival. Because Forum Expanded is dedicated to hyper-experimental forms of cinema – compared to the festival’s main discourse, it is a very marginalized section. That says a lot about how aesthetics are an iteration of politics (and it’s not coincidental that filmmakers withdrew from this very section – it’s usually the one that selects artists with a strong political conscience).

Having said that, I for one honestly don’t want to attend this festival anymore, although I know there will be different management next year. At least not until the festival proves that it regrets what it has done and that it will try to fix what happened this year, in one way or another. But also that there are concrete guarantees of freedom of expression. Given the urgency of the moment, I keep wondering how we can put pressure on institutions to react. How can we create networks of solidarity within our industries? How do we, despite this repressive environment, encourage people to take a stand?

How do we create institutions that are robust enough to respond adequately to historical situations like this? How do we defend ourselves in the face of this very aggressive political advance against freedom of expression in the arts that is taking place worldwide? Because unfortunately, if this is happening in Berlin, it is foreshadowing a global trend. If this can happen in Berlin, it can happen with much smaller and more fragile festivals.

Dora: Still, I think there is a vague chance that smaller festivals have a bit more freedom of expression. At least, I hope that. Precisely because they are not the public machinery that is the Berlinale, with all its institutional standards and ties to the city of Berlin. I think a smaller festival has a bit more leeway – that’s not to say they don’t suffer immensely from the lack of resources. Obviously, smaller festivals are also the ones that can be stifled more easily. But I think that by not having the hierarchy you mentioned earlier, by not having that layered structure, there is at least the chance of a unity or solidarity that reflects a bit more within the festival, as an organisation.

Flavia: I want to touch upon the fact that many people have given the example of Ukraine. (And I must say that I outright reject this false Ukraine-Palestine polarization that has taken root around the world.) Many people have pointed out the hypocrisy in the way institutions responded to this crisis, including the Berlinale – and even if I do reject this polarization, it’s clear that there is a precedent where there was an overwhelming, rapid, urgent response. How do we turn this situation into the norm? How do we ensure that institutions and organizations always respond, unequivocally, when civilian lives are at stake, along with realities that directly fuel the cinema we get to see at these international festivals? Otherwise, sure, if we don’t want to be exposed to this kind of stuff, if we don’t care, we can all just pack our bags and watch Marvel and Disney movies for the rest of our lives.

Dora: The questions that you’re asking I think are very important. They’re essential to establishing a minimum of moral health in the environment that we work in. But, on the one hand, I personally sometimes feel like being a critic is a small thing, and the institutions that we’re interacting with seem to be treating us as if we’re smaller and smaller. On the other hand, I believe that there do exist mechanisms of solidarity which we can apply so as to put pressure on institutions and the industry.

Flavia: Exactly. We should think about how we can create such mechanisms and structures – starting from the principle of solidarity, but not limited to it – within the Romanian film community, as well. This would counteract this precise feeling of hopelessness that we are experiencing, and also because there were dew such initiatives here. For example, a local initiative that did a wonderful job was the F-Sides feminist cineclub – within the industry, they were the first to show support for Palestine.

Dora: I think the praise for F-Sides is very well deserved. Not only did they take a position, but F-Sides also undertook this very essential mission to educate through film, and, most importantly, they’ve provided a platform for members of the Palestinian community to discuss with us, to help us be more educated on the subject – all of this in a way that very few local activities managed to do.

Flavia: To wrap things up, I’d like to go back to the idea of a strike – starting with the example of Strike Germany. I had a long discussion about this with a good friend, who was the first to ask me why I was not participating in Strike Germany. My answer – sadly enough – was that my participation in it would hurt me, individually, much more than it could ever hurt Germany in general, or the Berlinale in particular. (But well, I ended up being hurt, anyway.)

And so, what does a strike truly mean? Of course, any act of striking implies a risk for oneself – but in cinema and the arts, more than in other industries, due to the lack of proper syndical structures, there is an acute sense that there are countless people who are there to replace you immediately – and that are very willing to do so, too. And that speaks a lot about how little resources there are at hand in this industry, but also about how they are accumulated, that is, their distribution is completely unbalanced.

I don’t even know if the word strike is the one we’re looking for when we think about the cultural industries, given how the neoliberal economic model has profoundly affected them, given the enormous precarity within this environment. So, how does that affect negotiation, and collective action, when we are so deeply affected by said economic conditions? Even people who seemingly have some amount of capital, when looked at from the outside, are actually suffering from precarity. As freelancers, we practically do not have a right to strike, from a de facto perspective. We only have the right to consciously take a decision that we know will hurt ourselves, but at least we know that we’re doing it in the name of a superior moral cause.

Dora: I believe there are ways in which we can discuss a strike, ways in which, we as critics, can put pressure, at least through a kind of boycott or at least in time, if not all at once. Now, I’m very much aware of the fact that if I, a Romanian critic, stopped going to the Berlinale, the festival would care less than if it were a Romanian director. But I feel we have a duty to condemn certain things and to ask what part of a strike can we upkeep, even if it may be in such a way that we’re not faced with a very disastrous precarity. On the other hand, I don’t think a strike should mean a kind of retreat, in the sense that if all the people who can criticise things disappear, I fear, as you were saying, that there are many others who are willing to take your place, and the Berlinale can well go on with them.

Flavia: One thing that would be great is if filmmakers would publicly announce that they would no longer submit their films to the festival. I only saw the statement of Edgar Jorge Baralt, who said that he would delete the logo of the Berlinale from his short film, Ventana, but that’s about it. I don’t know yet how I will regard the films that will be screened there next year – if I’ll see them as strikebreakers or not.

On the other hand, if people stop sending their films to Berlin, then there is also the inherent risk of reconsolidating other centers of power, such as Cannes, Venice or Locarno. (Although I’d love it if festivals that are more left-of-field, like FIDMarseille or Visions du Reel, would gain from this.) So, an important aspect of this has to do with the redistribution of power, of a new balance of the power scales, speaking of strikes. These are all open questions – I don’t claim to have a clear answer to them, but rather, I just want to put them out there. But yeah, at the end of the day, support your local festival. Especially since local festivals often offer an alternative means of functioning, and we often know that this is where change is born (not just artistically, by means of discoveries, but also as a model of praxis), a change that, across time, is absorbed by medium-sized and larger festivals.

Dora: That’s true, but this is perhaps also a separate discussion, one that deals with festivals being centres of work and labour for many people working in the industry. Almost all of the film industry exists in one place for a week, and there are opportunities you wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. It comes down to the many functions of a film festival, each having its own context and problems, and each needing a separate, applied approach and discussion.

But I’m thinking now about what you were saying, about how we’ll be judging the films that choose to go to Berlinale next year. I completely agree that you can separate a film from the context in which it appears, but that up to a point. This year, there were things and people that cautioned us about the Berlinale, and, for various reasons, we didn’t act on these warnings. This is my wreath of shame, so to speak, despite having the reasons that I mentioned before. I wonder to what extent the same thing won’t happen with other people next year. Obviously, this experience, this learnt-lesson I think will mobilise more people, or it will mobilise people more unilaterally to consider their own positions and involvement in the festival. I would like to believe we’ve all learnt a lesson that we won’t be repeating next year. I keep asking myself these questions, to what extent will there not be another I need to be there, even with the new administration.

Flavia: For sure, there will be pressure to return – but, wie gesagt, I don’t want to return until the festival expresses regrets for the mistakes of this edition. There is a sensation of FOMO that one does get, at the end of the day, and it concerns absolutely every festival on the face of the planet, I can definitely empathize with that; I for one will count on the fact that most important films will travel to other places, as well. But yes, barring a larger, more concerted action – which could involve, let’s say, all the people who signed open letters during the festivals – which would continue to exert pressure, I don’t know how much things will change.

Dora: What I feel is very important to this discussion, and to how I felt during this festival, is that the questions we can extrapolate and the standards that we ask for are not only concerned with Berlinale, they need to be urgently applied to all film festivals, small or large. The eyes are evidently on Cannes now, which doesn’t have a very good reputation of political awareness, in terms of how it handled last year’s protests (and interdiction thereof). I think the lesson brought on by Berlinale, which is also at the top of A-category festivals, also launched a general question about what a film festival means. What are the relationships, dynamics and pressures it elicits? These standards that we’ve discussed need to be applied to everyone. But this is not to demand that all or each film festival say “on which side they are”, because I think a lot of people understand it in these terms; it’s about festivals reflecting on what you were mentioning in terms of the hypocrisy they uphold and the pressures that they elicit. And I believe critics and all participants in a festival have the duty to at least, as a first step, question these relationships and dynamics.

Flavia: And well, as the saying goes, to imagine that another world is possible. That the big festivals, especially those that have these so-called “markets”, can exist in a manner that, beyond cinema, prioritizes humans in front of profit. I think we should reimagine these structures – not just in order to have better working conditions, but it’s also the only way to press institutions for better responses to situations such as the atrocity in Gaza. And so, my final call is to at least dare to imagine other systems. Together with a permanent ceasefire.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.