Art Is Never Apolitical: Arundhati Roy Rebukes Berlinale Jury’s Artistic Neutrality

Booker Prize laureate Arundhati Roy has withdrawn from the Berlin International Film Festival, citing grave concern over remarks by jury president Wim Wenders that positioned cinema outside the realm of political responsibility when questioned about the ongoing devastation in Gaza. Roy had been invited as a special guest to present a restored print of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, the beloved 1989 film she wrote and acted in, now included in Berlinale’s Classics section. She announced her decision on Friday, February 13, calling Wenders’ remarks unacceptable and announcing her absence from the Berlinale with deep regret.

During a press interaction on February 12, Wenders was asked about Germany’s support for Israel amid the ongoing war. He argued that stepping into political terrain would alter the essential function of cinema, positioning artists as observers rather than actors within historical crises. Actor Michelle Yeoh, too, declined to address political tensions in the United States when pressed by reporters, saying she did not feel entitled to speak on realities beyond her own lived experience. She added that her focus remained on “what is important, which is cinema,” underscoring her preference to remain apolitical.

Roy expressed deep concern over these statements—highlighting that complicity through silence is a gesture history rarely forgives. Another juror, Ewa Puszczyńska, defended the festival’s neutrality and called questions linking the Berlinale to state policy unfair. She emphasised that artists cannot bear responsibility for governmental action. Roy’s response countered that art has never existed outside power structures and has often served as a language of resistance, witness and memory.

Roy further emphasised on the state of Israel of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians, adding that governments including the United States and Germany had enabled this devastation through financial and diplomatic backing. She also acknowledged the complexity of her relationship with German audiences, iterating that while state institutions had adopted rigid positions, ordinary German citizens had shown solidarity towards Palestinian voices. Voiced with deep conviction, Roy’s decision arrives at a time when the relationship between art and political life faces renewed scrutiny. Her refusal now extends that argument beyond theory into lived practice.

In light of these events, we revisit Outlook's March 2023 issue titled “Art For Our Sake” to examine creative labour in times of political fracture. Several international and regional narratives of art as resistance have been chronicled extensively, ensuring their ferocity endures in historical memory.

In this issue’s cover story, Rakhi Bose examines performance artist Amitesh Grover’s Money Opera, an ensemble show that sharply interrogates money and capitalist structures, articulated through an unyielding South Asian perspective.

Omar Rashid wrote about photojournalist Ishan Tankha’s A Peal of Spring Thunder, a striking visual chronicle of the conflict in Chhattisgarh, where Adivasi communities struggle to defend their land against state and corporate forces seeking to extract its economic value.

Abhik Bhattacharya engages with Nepal-based artist Mekh Limbu’s Mangdem’ma, an invocation toward healing Adivasi spirits and lands in Nepal. The work grapples with despair while urging the reclamation of histories erased by modern development and capitalist individualism.

Rakhi Bose also wrote about Zhanna Kadyrova, who transforms riverbed stones into uncanny replicas of palianytsia, a ceremonial bread in Ukraine, invoking questions of national identity and resistance amid the devastations of war.

Artist and curator Sudarshan Shetty wrote about his exhibition Who is Asleep Who is Awake, which probes the fragile terrain between fact and fiction, and the deeply personal ways in which both are perceived and represented.