Berlin Film Festival organizers announced Monday they filed a complaint with local police after the event’s Instagram account was hacked and began posting antisemitic content.
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According to Berlinale’s statement, the posts were immediately removed, and information was provided to local law enforcement authorities to launch an investigation.
“The Berlinale condemns this criminal act in the strongest possible terms and has deleted the posts and launched an investigation. In addition, the Berlinale has filed criminal charges against unknown persons. The LKA (the state criminal office) has begun an investigation," the festival said in a statement.
One of the posts that was published read: “From our unresolved Nazi past to our genocidal present — we have always been on the wrong side of history. But it’s not too late to change our future.” Another post noted that "we acknowledge that our silence makes us complicit in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in Palestine."
They further added, "We shed the idea that German guilt absolves us of our country’s history or our current crimes and decided to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, and we call on other cultural institutions in Germany to do the same."
In addition, the film festival’s management said in a statement that it doesn’t endorse controversial speeches made by filmmakers during the festival's closing ceremony, which were referred to by Israeli and German media outlets as "antisemitic".
The organizers emphasized that the remarks expressed the opinions of the filmmakers themselves, and clarified that the festival's head, Mariette Rissenbeek, condemned Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7 during the opening ceremony.
" We understand the outrage that the statements made by some of the award winners were perceived as too one-sided and, in some cases, inappropriate. In the run-up to and during our festival, we made it very clear what the Berlinale’s view of the war in the Middle East is and that we do not share one-sided positions," Rissenbeek said in response to the remarks made during the ceremony.
"However, the Berlinale sees itself – today, as in the past – as a platform for open dialogue across cultures and countries. We must therefore also tolerate opinions and statements that contradict our own opinions, as long as these statements do not discriminate against people or groups of people in a racist or similarly discriminating way or cross legal limits. From our point of view, it would have been appropriate in terms of content if the award winners and guests at the Award Ceremony had also made more differentiated statements on this issue.”
These events add to the growing challenges seen during cultural events and film festivals against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, and may push Israeli creators out of the international arena, either in protest against the actions in Gaza or simply in order to avoid issues that could disrupt these events.
"The Berlinale stands for democracy and openness. We explicitly oppose discrimination and all forms of hatred. We want to exchange ideas with other social and political institutions on how to conduct a social discourse on this extremely controversial topic in Germany – with the inclusion of international perspectives – without individual statements being perceived as antiדemitic or anti-Palestinian. We have to face up to this controversial topic – as an international film festival and as a society as a whole,” Rissenbeek said.