That same statement could also apply more broadly to the 2025 edition of the Berlinale, where Brandon Kramer\u2019s aforementioned documentary had its world premiere. This year\u2019s edition of the film festival arrived with many open questions. Some of these were inside baseball for cinephiles: how would new artistic director Tricia Tuttle remake the event? But most were larger: how would Berlin, both within the festival and also the city at large, respond to continued fallout over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has flared in the Gaza Strip?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among film workers of many stripes, calls to boycott and\/or strike this year\u2019s Berlinale<\/a> traveled far and wide on social media. Under the banner of favoring \u201cpeaceful dialogue\u201d rather than \u201cfree speech,\u201d German politicians lashed out<\/a> at the now-Oscar-nominated filmmakers behind No Other Land<\/em> for using their acceptance speech to highlight the inequality they face based on ethnicity. (As a publicly funded entity, Berlinale has a different relation to its government than many festivals of a similar scale.) This was just the most high-profile incident of many where the festival was taking sides in whose pain and perspectives were valid enough to receive their attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll admit: I felt a bit queasy and anguished about attending this year\u2019s Berlinale given the repeated calls I saw from respected colleagues to give the festival the cold shoulder. And I wasn\u2019t alone in that agony. Tilda Swinton, recipient of an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement, acknowledged the deliberation she made. \u201cI was given, thanks to the festival, a platform which I decided in a personal moment was potentially more useful to all our causes than me not turning up,\u201d she explained at a press conference<\/a>. \u201cI understand absolutely that boycotting can feel and very often is the most powerful thing we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In case it wasn\u2019t clear by the existence of this piece, I ultimately decided to attend the festival in the spirit of trying to engage with the conversation rather than letting it take place on one-sided terms. I hoped to engage and maybe understand, even if I didn\u2019t fully agree. Admittedly, there was not a ton of dialogue to be found. Blame it on the icy February weather that cut down on mobility, or maybe chalk it up to how much more taciturn the German people tend to be than the French at Cannes or the Italians in Venice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But apart from one bullhorn and a banner agitating for Palestinians outside a hub for press and market screenings, there was hardly a peep of protest. It would appear most of the dissenting voices decamped to the alternative festival programmed by On Strike Berlin<\/a> \u2014 far from the festival grounds. That ceded the opening night\u2019s red carpet to be dominated by a show of solidarity for Israeli actor David Cunio<\/a>, still held hostage by Hamas, with little but online consternation from those who wished to see a broader display of sympathy. Initial reports from a screening where director Jun Li made a statement in support of the Palestinian people indicated that festival staff were open to pursuing a conversation<\/a>, but the legacy of last year\u2019s controversies reared its head again with local police opening an investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems like everything at the Berlinale was conspiring to elevate the message of the one film with ties to Palestine in their main competition, Yunan<\/em><\/strong>. If anyone had standing to address the issues swirling around, it would be the film\u2019s director Ameer Fakher Eldin. (He\u2019s of Syrian and Palestinian descent, was born in Ukraine, and now lives in Germany.) Watching his patient, tender film is like getting to observe a flower sprout and blossom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yunan<\/em> is a film that takes missed connections and failed communication as its very subject. The beleaguered, fatigued writer Munir (Georges Khabbaz) sets off for an island retreat to recover from some recent health ailments. Things don\u2019t exactly get off to a promising start when Valeska (Hanna Schygulla) cannot locate his reservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Munir slowly begins to open up to the proprietor and her son Karl (Tom Wlaschiha) by drawing strength from a parable about a cursed shepherd passed down from his dementia-addled mother. Eldin\u2019s film is remarkably alive to the power of storytelling and imagination to open up new portals to experiencing reality. His belief in the possibility of renewal is heartwarming because it\u2019s given the chance to flourish organically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gentility of films like Holding Liat<\/em> and Yunan<\/em> stood in stark contrast to most of the other films I saw that dared to depict the contemporary world. Radu Jude\u2019s Kontinental \u201825<\/em><\/strong>, a project the Romanian wunderkind turned around in the last four months, takes the temperature of a depleted continental Europe through a moral fable in the model of Roberto Rossellini\u2019s Europe \u201851<\/em>. His tortured protagonist Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) loses all her bearings following a tangential connection to the death by suicide of a homeless man she helped to evict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These feelings of guilt, perhaps to the point of overcompensation, felt perfectly attuned to the mood of a German festival. I made a point to venture outside the festival grounds and acquaint myself with the more contemporary history of Berlin as a first-time visitor to the city. (No self-interested reason for an American to brush up on how fascists seize power, of course.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/yunan-1024x576.jpg\")
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