We Need Artists Who Aren’t Afraid of Politics
Art does not merely reflect the world. It helps build it.
The Berlinale stage is not a neutral living room. It’s one of the most visible cultural platforms in the world, where silence is not accidental. Also, a tiny reminder — there is no such thing as “apolitical art.”
Every film, every performance, every red-carpet moment, every acceptance speech carries the fingerprints of the political world that produced it.
This year’s Berlin Film Festival is a parade of spineless, apolitical cowards posing as artists. It’s hard to comprehend the pile of nonsense that came out of so many mouths over the past couple of days.
Being an artist, standing on one of the world’s largest stages, at one of the most political festivals, backed by a government funding an ongoing genocide — while living through deadly ICE protests in the U.S., the Epstein scandal, a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, genocide in Sudan, human rights violations and sexual violence in Congo, and the rise of fascism in the UK, the U.S., and Germany…
