Berlinale 2025: New director same politics
From government interference and media outrage to underwhelming films and a push for commercialization, the Berlinale once again struggles between its political reputation and red carpet spectacle.
A number of different incidents, which the media refer to as “controversies”, kicked off last year’s Berlinale: Claudia Roth, Germany’s Cultural Minister, sacked the festival directors and defunded it to shift funds to Germany’s growing military budget; then, right before the festival, and during it, festival workers and outside activists threatened strikes that led to increased police presence and tighter security. Despite the promise of the latter, nothing derailed the festival aside from Roth and Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner shamefully denouncing the festival’s documentary award winners, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, one of whom (Adra) is currently watching, and posting videos on X of, Israeli soldiers illegally demolishing his home in the West Bank. This latter incident “plagued” the Berlinale last year, depending on which side of the genocide you are on, and is being used this year for anti-politicization means.
As with every year, the festival leaders’ response to the Berlinale being the “political” film festival was to “wait and see” in the films themselves. And once again that rings hollow and false. This year, a two-fold threat of pro-Palestinian and anti-fascist (i.e., anti-Trump, anti-AfD) demos were expected to take the spotlight away from the red carpet glamour. No dice! No such threat has materialized, as much as some in the media want it to for their prefab clickbait. Since the German federal election is on Sunday (the 23rd, which will see the conservatives come back to power), the final day of the festival, we’ll just have to wait and see how much the political scene will affect the festival.
The 75th edition of the Berlinale is led by Tricia Tuttle, an American who commercialized the London Film Festival, presumably tasked with doing the same for Berlinale. In Frau Roth’s view, the two major concerns with the previous directors were their lack of commercial interest and their inability to conform to that norm. Tuttle fulfills both needs, which was obvious in a new main auto-sponsor for the festival. (Cupra isn’t Audi, but that’s alright because they can get their mileage out of the all-EV fleet ferrying celebrities from hotels to red carpet premieres.)
It’s still the first weekend of the festival, so there’s plenty more to see, but so far, the films have been underwhelming. The two that I enjoyed, A Complete Unknown and Mickey 17 are both here by accident of their calendar releases and are not in competition. It’s probably no coincidence that these two programmatically de-emphasized films are about small revolutionaries in an oppressive political system—a theme a “political film festival” might want to celebrate. Instead, we’ll line up to see what Chalamet and Pattinson wear on the red carpet, then award something else to symbolically feel better about ourselves (see last year with Dahomey).
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