Today, as the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) 2026 unfolds with its usual fanfare, the glaring contradiction at its heart could not be more stark: a festival celebrating Arab and Turkish cinema while its host country, Germany, arms and bankrolls the genocide in Gaza. The lineup, featuring a record number of films from the region, is not a triumph of cultural exchange—it is a grotesque spectacle of liberal hypocrisy, where art is weaponized to launder the bloodstains of imperialism.
Art Under Occupation: The Festival’s Shameful Silence
The Berlinale’s 2026 program boasts an impressive roster of Arab and Turkish filmmakers, including works from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt. Films like The Last Fisherman of Gaza, a documentary short by Palestinian director Mohammed Al-Khatib, and The Settlers, a Lebanese feature about the psychological toll of occupation, are being hailed as “bold” and “necessary.” Yet the festival’s organizers have remained conspicuously silent on the very context that makes these films urgent: the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, which Germany has enabled through its unwavering military and diplomatic support for Israel.
This is not an oversight. It is a deliberate strategy. By platforming Arab cinema while ignoring the genocide it documents, the Berlinale performs the classic liberal trick of depoliticizing art. The message is clear: you can show the suffering, but you cannot name the perpetrators. You can critique occupation, but you cannot implicate the German state, which has supplied Israel with over €300 million in weapons since October 2023 and criminalized pro-Palestinian protests under the guise of “fighting antisemitism.”
The Hypocrisy of “Neutral” Spaces
The festival’s refusal to take a stand is not neutrality—it is complicity. When German Culture Minister Claudia Roth, a self-proclaimed progressive, delivered the opening remarks, she spoke of “art’s power to bridge divides” while omitting any mention of Gaza. This is the same Roth who, in 2021, tweeted that “Israel has the right to defend itself” as bombs rained down on Gaza, killing 260 Palestinians, including 66 children. Her presence at the Berlinale is a reminder that the German state’s commitment to “cultural diplomacy” is nothing more than a fig leaf for its role in Palestinian dispossession.
Meanwhile, the festival’s “Perspektive Deutsches Kino” section includes a film about German arms manufacturers, The Merchants of Death, which traces the supply chains feeding Israel’s war machine. Yet the film’s screening has been met with tepid applause, as if exposing the profiteers of genocide is an act of radicalism rather than the bare minimum of moral decency. The disconnect is staggering: a festival that claims to champion marginalized voices is simultaneously providing cover for the very systems that marginalize them.
Resistance on the Red Carpet
Unsurprisingly, the Berlinale’s hypocrisy has not gone unchallenged. A coalition of Palestinian filmmakers, joined by international allies, staged a protest outside the festival’s opening ceremony, holding signs that read “No Culture Under Occupation” and “Germany: Stop Arming Genocide.” Among them was Syrian director Soudade Kaadan, whose film Nehmé is screening at the festival. In a statement to the press, Kaadan condemned the Berlinale’s “moral bankruptcy,” asking, “How can you celebrate our stories while your government funds their destruction?”
The protest underscores a growing rift within the film industry. While institutions like the Berlinale cling to the illusion of “artistic freedom” untethered from politics, filmmakers from the Global South are increasingly rejecting this false dichotomy. For them, cinema is not a neutral space but a battleground where the narratives of the oppressed are either amplified or erased. The fact that the Berlinale has chosen the latter—platforming Palestinian stories while ignoring the material conditions that necessitate them—reveals the limits of liberal cultural institutions.
Why This Matters:
The Berlinale’s 2026 lineup is a case study in how the cultural industry functions as an appendage of imperialism. By divorcing art from its political context, festivals like this one serve a dual purpose: they provide a veneer of progressivism for the ruling class while neutralizing the radical potential of the stories they claim to uplift. When a Palestinian film about life under occupation screens in Berlin, but the German state is simultaneously arming that occupation, the festival becomes part of the propaganda machine.
This is not just about one film festival. It is about how culture is weaponized to maintain the status quo. The same logic applies to every museum, gallery, and university that claims to stand for “free expression” while taking money from arms dealers, fossil fuel giants, and Zionist lobby groups. The Berlinale’s refusal to condemn Germany’s role in Gaza is not a failure of courage—it is a feature of the system. Cultural institutions do not exist in a vacuum; they are embedded within the very structures of capital and empire that they purport to critique.
For the far-left, the lesson is clear: we cannot rely on bourgeois cultural institutions to do the work of liberation. The films being screened at the Berlinale—stories of resistance, displacement, and resilience—deserve to be seen, but they deserve more than a red-carpet spectacle. They deserve a movement that connects the dots between art and material struggle. That means boycotting festivals that whitewash genocide, supporting independent Palestinian filmmakers, and building our own cultural spaces—ones that do not separate art from the fight for justice.
The ruling class has always understood that culture is a battleground. The question is whether we will let them monopolize it.