Redux
Every journey circles home
Art has never existed in a vacuum. It can serve the official narrative or resist it, and filmmakers, like all artists, have always moved between these extremes. Some have faced persecution, exile, or even death for their convictions. Others have been criticised for supporting regimes or ideologies now widely condemned. History is always the judge, and so too is the history of art. This is the price and the power of freedom of expression: whether we like it or not, it is visible, it is heard, and it is subject to judgment, it can be praised, it can be damned. The danger arises when expression is punished.
The 76th Berlinale reminds us of this truth. Controversies that began with Wim Wenders’ insistence that films should stay “outside of politics,” and intensified with the courageous words of Palestinian-Syrian director Abdallah Al-Khatib, reflect a longstanding tension. Even appearing in a photograph, publicly acknowledging a side, or giving voice to human suffering can be dangerous in a world saturated with images and noise.
These German moments remind us what happened at a previous Cyprus edition of the biennale, or the threats against painter Giorgos Gavriel, whose exhibition was cancelled after sparking outrage. This seems to be the new normal...
Yesterday, Thursday, more than 500 Berlinale staff, contract workers, and freelancers issued a statement in support of festival director Tricia Tuttle. It was a collective affirmation of the principle that art, and the spaces that sustain it, must be safe. The statement arrived amid reports of government scrutiny over her leadership. The latest Berlinale episode is a reminder that creative expression, whether on film, on canvas, or in speech, cannot be disentangled from the world it inhabits on or off the magic big screen.
Art endures because it challenges, provokes, and refuses to be silent. Its freedom is its power, and its vulnerability is its reality. The Berlinale of 2026 is part of the world's latest anomaly. But it's also part of a continuum in which artists speak, resist, and risk and in doing so, they remind us that art cannot remain untouched, judged, or silenced.