The live feed for the opening jury press conference of the Berlin Film Festival went down on Thursday as a journalist in the room asked a contentious question on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Jury president Wim Wenders was joined on stage by jury members Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham, Korean actor Bae Doona, Indian archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, U.S. director Reinaldo Marcus Green, Japanese HIKARI and Polish producer Ewa Puszczyńska.
They were given a fairly easy ride at the beginning of the press conference kicking off the Berlinale’s 76th edition, with Festival Director Tricia Tuttle getting the ball-rolling with a question on what “excited them about film”
The atmosphere in the room tensed, however, when a German journalist asked a question implying Berlinale had shown support for people in Iran and Ukraine, “but never for Palestine” and that the German government had supported Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
He framed the question in response to an earlier comment by Puszczyńska on how cinema can change the world.
“My question is, in light of the German government’s support of the genocide in Gaza and its role as the main funder of the Berlinale do you as a member of the jury…,” he said. The feed went down, cutting the live broadcast of the whole question: “Do you as a member of the jury support this selective treatment of human rights?”.
The feed remained offline for the entirety of the answers given by Puszczyńska and Wenders.
Questioned by Deadline on whether the question had been censored, a spokesperson said the cut in the broadcast had been due to technical issues.
“We are having technical Problems with the signal. No censorship. We will have the recording of the whole press conference online later today,” they replied.
Back in the room Polish producer Eva Puszczyńska pushed back against the question.
“Asking this question is a little bit unfair. We use the words ‘change the world’ but of course, we are trying to talk to every single viewer, to make them think that we cannot be responsible for what that decision would be — the decision to support Israel, or the decision to support Palestine,” she said.
“But there are many wars with genocides, and we do not talk about that,” she continued. “So this is a very complicated question… as I said, it’s a bit unfair asking us how we support… not support our governments… Because that’s the politicians. I’m speaking for myself — I go to elections, I vote using my pride, as a citizen of Poland and as a citizen of Europe, of the world.”
Wenders also attempted to shut the question down saying: “We have to stay out of politics… We are the counterweight of politics, the opposite of politics, we have to do the work of people — not the work of politicians.”