“We have to stay out of politics.” This awkward remark by Wim Wenders, made on February 17 at the Berlinale, where he was serving as jury president, was enough to ignite controversy at the German film festival. He was responding to a question from Tilo Jung, a German political journalist, who had criticized the festival for its lack of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Cautious, as German institutions generally are regarding the legacy of Jewish history, the Berlinale has been generally unwilling to tolerate calls for Israel’s destruction that periodically arise within legitimate demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their suffering. Still, the festival continues to consistently demonstrate perfect balance in its program, giving equal prominence to both Palestinian and Israeli cinema.
One of the underlying questions in this Berlin controversy is the call to boycott Israeli cinema. This is not a new issue. Launched by Palestinian NGOs in 2005, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for a total boycott of Israel, with English filmmaker Ken Loach as one of its most prominent cultural supporters. The shocking escalation of the conflict since the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent massive and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, have given the movement a new dimension and significantly shaken up the film industry. On September 8, 2025, the advocacy group Film Workers for Palestine launched a call to boycott Israeli cinema, which gathered 5,000 signatures from industry professionals within two weeks.
As a result, Israeli cinema can now scarcely aspire to international co-productions and its access to festivals and theaters outside Israel is dwindling. Two factors contribute to this: an openly political stance and, just as importantly, a cautiousness that goes largely unspoken in the face of the intensity of the debates and actions surrounding this issue. For this reason, it is difficult to gauge people’s true opinions, but the numbers speak for themselves. According to figures from France’s national film board – which recorded a peak of nine Israeli films distributed in 2019 – not a single majority-Israeli production has been released in a French movie theater since July 2024.
You have 55.51% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
