Whatever director Wim Wenders was trying to do, back during the early days of his just-ended run as jury president of the 2026 Berlin Film Festival—and specifically while making statements that filmmaking is “the opposite of politics,” and cautioning his fellow filmmakers to “stay out of politics”—it does not seem to have worked. That’s going off of not just the last two weeks, which have seen attendees at the German festival leaning one way or another in the face of barrages of politically charged questions from reporters, but also today’s big awards show finale, in which multiple winners gave cries of “Free Palestine,” even bringing a Palestinian flag up on the event’s stage.
The latter action was performed by Palestinian filmmaker Abdallah Al-Khatib, who (via Deadline) was on stage to take the festival’s Perspectives First Film Prize for his film Chronicles From The Siege. (He also called out the German government, which throws a lot of support at the festival, for “complicity” in Israel’s conduct in Gaza, calling it “genocide”—while noting that he might be imperiling his refugee status in the country by doing so.) Elsewhere during the ceremony, Lebanese director Marie-Rose Osta took home the Golden Bear for Best Short Film for her short “Someday A Child” (about a young boy with supernatural powers) telling the awards show audience, “In reality children in Gaza, in all of Palestine, and in my Lebanon do not have superpowers to protect them from Israeli bombs. No child should need superpowers to survive a genocide empowered by veto powers and the collapse of international law…If this Golden Bear means anything, let it mean that Lebanese and Palestinian children are not negotiable.”
Wenders himself didn’t seem shy about giving plaudits to films with clearly political underpinnings—including the festival’s big Golden Bear winner, Ilker Çatak’s Yellow Letters, which Wenders praised for its depiction of life under totalitarian rule. Other winners at this year’s Berlinale included Emim Alper’s Salvation (Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize) and Lance Hammer’s Queen At Sea (Silver Bear Jury Prize), while individual awards were given to director Grant Gee (for Everybody Digs Bill Evans), Sandra Hüller (who won Best Lead Performance for Rose), screenwriter Geneviève Dulude-de Celles for Nina Roza, and Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for their supporting performances in Queen At Sea. You can see a full list of winners here.
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