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A Cinema of Genocide

On the screens at the Berlinale, we are seeing programmes on political resistance; on the streets outside the cinema, we are seeing the festival’s confined and incongruent approach to protest.

The films on the big screen here explore different modes of engagement to negotiate the erasures and violence of the past. I watched Mati Diop’s Dahomey (France/Senegal/Benin, 2024) in the cavernous hall of the Miriam Makeba auditorium at HKW with around 1000 people. At the film’s centre, we witness a university-debate-discussion in a large hall following the recent repatriation of seven ancient sculptures to Benin. Diop staged the debate, but the conversations unfold freely. As students present their varying arguments, they negotiate their own identity in relation to these statues, referring to them variably as ‘things’ and ‘stuff’, unsure what to call these objects that are both symbolic and lost to them, marking a slippery and ambivalent connection to a precolonial past.

Rather than didactically presuppose a postcolonial ‘message’, the film is more interested in exploring the vacillating sense of severance and connection the young generation of Benin feel in relation to their precolonial history. The debate sequences within the university are intercut with footage of other people listening to the debate beyond the room – women sharing a pair of headphones at an outdoor table; a driver’s car speaker turned to full volume during rush hour; a radio positioned precariously. Diop renegotiates the porous margins between different audiences, reflexively referring to us, at the cinemas in Berlin as the third set of witnesses. Diop exposes multiple spectatorial positions which coincide and conflict, asking us to step back to consider our positionalities and our individual relationships to these colonial histories.

In comparison to the porosity offered by Diop’s spectatorial reflexivity, the festival seems more interested in minimising these conversations and voices quite literally into a compartmentalised box. In the square on Postdamer Platz, the festival built a sauna-sized wooden cabin called the ‘TinyHouse Project’ to facilitate “debates” about Israel-Palestine and the “Middle East”. In this microspace, only six people can fit at a time between the hours of 1pm and 5pm for 3 days of the festival. Here, the word “debate” reveals a dubious and distancing political stance in response to an ongoing genocide. In contrast to the large, echoing spaces of the cinemas, this “TinyHouse” is a soundproof and miniscule booth sitting along the wide streets of Potsdamer Platz, the central hub of the festival, hiding in plain sight. I tried to go to the TinyHouse yesterday, but by the time I got there the project had ended after its 3-day run and I was met with their disappearance.

The festival has also refused to address the ongoing movement by Strike Germany, which is “a call for international cultural workers to strike from German cultural institutions and refuse their use of McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine.” The filmmakers who participated in the boycott of the Berlinale and retracted their films include John Greyson, Suneil Sanzgiri, Ayo Tsalithaba. From Talents, filmmakers who’ve boycotted include Maryam Tafakory, Advik Beni and Monica Sorelle. Although Berlinale Talents has included a brief logline on their page about these drop-outs, individual Talents’ pages and film pages have been deleted. When I click on their projects, this is where the URL takes me:

What can we see in these broken URLS? Who is allowed an archive of resistance? In turn, what do these archives of silence express?

In the space left agape by institutional silence, there have emerged counter archives, a counter-cartography of memory through collective work, transcription and archiving. This labour counteracts the official narrative that the festival attempts to maintain and control. These modes of dissemination are wide-ranging: Google Docs, Instagram pages, Twitter, analogue posters and flyers.

This document by Archive of Silence records the cancellations and silencing of pro-Palestinian voices and statements in German cultural institutions, from arts exhibitions to book fairs and club nights. And this is their Instagram page, @archive_of_silence.

Below are the statements by filmmakers participating in Strike Germany who withdrew their participation from the Berlinale:

Maryam Tafakory
"When you expose a problem you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about it or if you went away.” – Sara Ahmed
Things won't change if people stay focused on not changing anything. People insist on 'no-change' by making excuses not to join strikes and boycotts. They prioritise self-interest by questioning or vilifying the legitimacy or impact of collective efforts they do not want to join.
They label the artists who care for people other than themselves activists. They may even call them "attention seekers and suggest that they’re doing it for 'social media' because Western individualism is an ideology that they, consciously or unconsciously, hold so dear that they can never make sense of anyone who would risk their career, income, friendships, or future for some unknown 'impossible outcome that may take several years to manifest.
Some want immediate change because, apparently, all apartheids were dismantled overnight. For some, 'no-change' is their security and profit. A friend recently said, "artists/curators are staying silent for the doors that will soon open for them". If you've ever wondered how far profiting from this silence can reach, it is being revealed in countless ways, in plain sight. Don't stop talking about Palestine because your friends are patronising you with the same logic women have long been patronised: "attention seekers"
Those of us who come from the Middle East, more than being used to your bombs, are used to your lack of care, your silence, your flowery excuses to risk nothing and return to business as usual. Your feigned solidarities go as far as expirable pictures but never as far as any real risk to your comfort. Soon, we may hear allies say, "are our risks proportional to the outcome we may or may not see in our lifetime?"
Western individualism kills even the Palestinians who survive the bombs.
Three weeks ago, I withdrew my project from one of Berlinale Labs in support of @StrikeGermany. I didn’t publicise it to avoid yet another public withdrawal which attracts abundant unkindness and unfriendly emails and messages from every angle.
I am publishing this now in response to the invitation of the far-right AfD party to the festival and because Berlinale decided to remove any trace of my selection in the lab before filling my seat as if nothing had happened.
Not too dissimilar to what IDFA did: erasing our films without acknowledging our withdrawal and, most essentially, our reasons for doing so. This implies a lack of regard for our presence, political stance, and the purpose behind these withdrawals.
Nothing wrong with being replaced; I only hoped the festival would exhibit minimal support by not entirely censoring this withdrawal. The irony here being that the project with which I applied was the next in my series of films about censorship.
When institutions claim they “respect” the artist’s decision, one way to show that respect is by publicizing the reasons for their withdrawal instead of erasing them altogether.
This was to be my first Berlinale. I have been rejected every other year I applied. I am very grateful to the programmers who supported my work and granted me the opportunity for my new film to be among the lab’s ten selected projects. But I will carry on supporting @StrikeGermany and @filmworks4pal.
I also want to acknowledge that festivals’ decisions don’t necessarily reflect those of the programmers, many of whom, like artists, are in precarious positions."

Suneil Sanzgiri
"I am withdrawing my work from the Berlinale. Statements like these feel utterly useless in the face of over 100 days of live-streamed genocide against the Palestinian people, the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes. Yet the state repression in Germany of Palestinian voices and critics of the Zionist occupation, the genocide, the mass starvation, and the apartheid that has taken the lives of over 23,000 people and displaced 1.7 million, must not go unchallenged.
It must be met with our principled and justified action. We as artists must stand up to structures of silence, suppression, censorship, and "artwashing" of a genocide.
While I do not claim that removing one's work is the only moral or ethical decision, we have an opportunity to collectively move in support of the Palestinian struggle by not letting our work prop up a country that, like the United States, aids and abets Israel's war crimes, ignores international law, and requires all cultural institutions to wrongly equate critiques of Zionism to anti-Semitism. It does not have to be this way.
My work, which explores histories of anti-colonial solidarity networks between India and Africa and possibilities of world-building amidst centuries of colonial plunder, makes very clear the ongoing relevance of resistance to occupation.
If we do not live by the tenets and values of our work then at best we are hypocritical and at worst we are used as pawns, tokens, and puppets of a scheme set up to perpetuate a system that continues to support a genocide right in front of our faces.
While I have left open the possibility of the festival meeting one or more of the demands of the Strike Germany campaign, it is clear that the only possibility for me is to withdraw my work from the festival. I will not be complicit. We all have blood on our hands. We can only move in ways that loudly denounce that blood. As many have said, we owe Gaza our endurance and Palestine our solidarity."

Advik Beni
I have decided to withdraw from Berlinale Talents. It is time we unravel and reveal these so-called "cultural institutes" and "prestigious spaces" for what they truly are: spaces of tokenized acceptances that feign allyship for their own benefit and on their own terms to represent a democratically wholesome image of themselves, whilst continuing to uphold systems of oppression and degradation.
In the wake of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, I cannot align myself or my work with the statement and sentiments that have been put out by the festival. I find it disheartening to observe the German government's current stance and their complete disregard for the rights of the Palestinian people.
There is simply no other way to say it: we are witnessing the complacency of these institutes in the face of genocide.
As someone from the "born-free generation" of South Africa, making work about the violent history of Apartheid and its current ramifications in my country, I have relied on the language of cinema to portray the systems of subjugation and those who resist them. Consequently, I cannot be a part of an institute that displays such callous apathy for another ongoing Apartheid.
I don't see any strength in "speaking out in the language of cinema" if it cannot even call for a ceasefire.
As filmmakers, artists and curators, we have always strived for images that share our absolute love, utter dismay and tireless hope for this world we inhabit – images that also help us learn, organise and resist.
But I find myself asking: what image is worthier than the one being shared with us every single second from Palestine? And for how long can you choose to ignore it? Gaza is illuminating that which has always been there – that which also plagues Congo, Suan and numerous others. We will never be free until we are all free.
I urge us all to rethink our positions and relationships with these various institutions before we submit ourselves and our labour to them. It is time for us to build new vessels that may hold and nurture our work, instead of holding onto the decrypt and colonial establishments that refuse to change.

These are only three of the statements which were not shared by the festival. How do we re-route our lines of resistance? In broken URLs, where can we redirect our dissent?

It is not so easy to appease the public with a publicity stunt as the Berlinale may have wished with their TinyHouse. Around the festival, resistance has continued to flow out and infiltrate physical spaces beyond the festival’s reach. At the European Film Market (EFM) at Gropius Bau, around 50 people entered the ground floor of the main atrium shouting, “Stop the genocide”, while large banners unfurled from the galleries above inscribed “Lights, Camera, Genocide” with an image of a clapperboard dripping in blood. The EFM is an unlikely and significant position for the protest as only those with Industry badges can enter, suggesting that the protesters are cinema workers. Furthermore, multiple Israeli film funds are convening at the EFM and according to @let_go_of_the_festival on Instagram, “Almost all three of the Film Funds at the Berlinale are fully or partially funded by Israel’s Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Israel Film Council. The former has been celebrating and promoting events for the IOF and their reservists.”

Filmmakers for Palestine (@filmworks4pal) has been organising vigils at lunchtimes at the festival. We gathered outside the cinemas, where the organisers read out the names and the stories of cultural workers who have been killed by Israel in Gaza. On the 20th of February, at a ‘Cinema for Peace’ talk at a cinema in Berlin (not affiliated with the Berlinale), Hillary Clinton was the guest. As she spoke, attendants shouted back at her complicity with a “Cinema of genocide!”, each person standing up as the previous person was censored and led away.

In the last months, witnessing this cinema of genocide, of grief, of unbearable loss, our position as passive spectators has become impossible. What is our role as spectators bearing witness to this violence? As I’ve watched alongside millions of others, scrolling through these images (could there be anything more untenable than the act of scrolling?), we cannot continue to be passive viewers or look away.

In a piece for Jewish Currents, Palestinian-American writer Sarah Aziza examines the context of bearing witness in relation to touch:

the verb to witness comes from the root شهد. This is also the source of the much-maligned word شهيد, shaheed, which means, literally, witnesser, but is often translated as martyr. It is a word with many folds of meaning and history. It carries connotations not only of seeing, but of presence and proximity. To be a witness is to make contact, to be touched, and to bear the marks of this touch.

I am so moved by this statement. In grief, we can no longer touch those we’ve lost, yet the act of bearing witness is a form of touch that allows us to imagine ourselves not as just viewers, but as participants who can touch and be touched. In our position as spectators at the cinema, is there a way of renegotiating our distance and proximity to images – of thinking of our spectatorship as an act of touching instead of looking?

At the festival, I’ve been watching films that frequently employ archival material to think about the past, grief and all that has been lost in colonial violence. I’m moved by how the films themselves are constantly attempting to touch.

In the Iranian personal documentary, What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov? (Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov?, Germany, 2024), the director Faraz Fesharaki weaves together fragmentary Zoom calls with his family in Iran, while he is away in Berlin. Frequently, we see the time lags, blurs and frozen edifices of poor signals on his parent’s screens where the internet signal appears weaker. They mark the distance of exile, and even the image is attempting to touch – through the pixels bound so tightly and blurrily together, reaching to each other to form this image.

In Dahomey, Diop’s images reveal the process of moving the stolen statues, different hands touching and holding these statues to transport and reposition them. The statues bear the marks of all the hands which have touched it through time – the ancient artists, the colonisers, the museum workers. The touch holds history where official records don’t.

In Voices of the Silenced (Yomigaeru Koe, Japan/South Korea, 2024), the mother-daughter director duo Park Soo-nam and Park Maeui retrieve the physical film materials of the director’s archive, restoring Park’s old interviews and footage with Zainachi-Koreans who were forcibly taken to Japan during Japanese colonialism. The act of restoration is an act of ‘touching up’ to resurrect the image into existence and the director asks: “Can restoring the film preserve their memory?”

The reason I’m a film writer is because watching images in a dark room with other people touches me deeply – I am touched by watching together and I am touched by all our private and individual responses to what we see on screen. I write in response to being touched.

As witnesses, we should feel the contact of this touch – not just in terms of affect, but in terms of our complicity – we should feel ‘undone’ by watching these great injustices within our own privileged positions as spectators. From watching the live-streamed images from Gaza, we can also imagine the violence of what we can’t see or hear, of the suffering that we cannot even imagine.

In the screening of No Other Land, the film which examines Israeli violence and forced displacement in the West Bank, one of the directors, the Palestinian lawyer and activist Basel Adra speaks about how his phone camera is one of his tools of resistance, as to witness is to hold the proof and refute the lies of the genocidal state, pushing others to action. Of course we feel broken, we feel helpless watching these images, yet positioned as a witness, we should sacrifice, mourn and resist. As Film Workers for Palestine (@filmworkers4pal) writes : “We are told our words and images have power, and that our work can help end injustice. For over 100 days, images of Israel’s genocide in Gaza have flooded our screens but this has not stopped the continuing atrocities.”

Watching these films at the Berlinale about different filmmakers’ relationships to trauma and the past, I feel the constant haunting of the present. If anything, watching images should move us enough to strive to never let another atrocity happen. Institutions should feel the complicity of this touch, to live to this ethos that they present on screen as they bear the power to affect the change they continue to preach. The world with genocide cannot continue with business as normal. Images are not made for us to passively spectate, today, they demand more of us. Being undone by what we see, we must demand more of each other as witnesses.