{"id":608685,"date":"2024-02-15T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-berlins-right-wing-u-turn-dodged-a-red-carpet-scandal-but-sparked-broader-political-debate\/"},"modified":"2024-02-15T09:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T06:30:00","slug":"how-berlins-right-wing-u-turn-dodged-a-red-carpet-scandal-but-sparked-broader-political-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-berlins-right-wing-u-turn-dodged-a-red-carpet-scandal-but-sparked-broader-political-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Berlin\u2019s Right-Wing U-Turn Dodged a Red Carpet Scandal But Sparked Broader Political Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n A week ago, the Berlin Film Festival was bracing for the worst.<\/p>\n

\n Alongside possible pro-Palestinian protests of the sort that took place at Sundance last month, it looked like a much larger demonstration, by German film industry and local activists, might completely shut down the red carpet. There was growing anger over the Berlinale\u2018s decision to invite members of Germany\u2019s far-right party Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) to tonight\u2019s opening gala. More than 200 film professionals, most of them from within the German industry, issued an open letter calling the decision \u201cincompatible\u201d with the festival\u2019s official commitment to being a place of \u201cempathy, awareness, and understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n The Berlinale, which is state-funded, regularly invites 100 members of the Berlin state parliament to attend opening night. The parliament picks the guests, making sure to include members from all elected parties. Since 2017, that\u2019s included the AfD.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey always get invited, and they stand by themselves in a little circle, with no one talking to them,\u201d
said a state parliament representative, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk on political matters.<\/p>\n

\n But the AfD\u2019s increasing radicalization \u2014 a recent investigation revealed AfD plans to carry out mass deportations of non-ethnic Germans if they came to power \u2014 and its rising support in the polls has many in the country questioning whether the party poses a fundamental threat to German democracy. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of Germans have been marching in anti-AfD demonstrations, and there are calls to have the party banned.<\/p>\n

\n Last Thursday, the Berlinale performed an abrupt u-turn and dis-invited the five AfD members on its guest list. Berlinale directors Mari\u00ebtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian called the move \u201can unequivocal stand in favor of an open democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWith 1,000s of people out on the streets every weekend protesting the AfD, I think the Berlinale just read the room,\u201d says Deborah Cole, a Berlin-based U.S. journalist with news<\/a> agency AFP. \u201cIt would have been a terrible look on opening night with, the first Black jury president (Lupita Nyong\u2019o) with stars from around the world, to have the attention, and the scandal, on these AfD politicians in the audience. Who of course would have loved the attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n The uninvited right-wingers are already mining political capital from the festival\u2019s U-Turn. AfD politician Gunnar Lindemann took to X to compare the dis-invitation to the exclusion of the Jews from society under the Nazis.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe comparison was very on brand but also so jaw-dropping that you think well protocol is one thing, but these people have business being [at the Berlinale],\u201d says Cole.<\/p>\n

\n It wasn\u2019t always so. In 2019, the then Berlinale director, Dieter Kosslick, explicitly invited AfD members to the festival, urging them to see a documentary about the reality of life in the Warsaw ghetto.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cAnd he got a huge round of app<\/a>lause for that,\u201d notes Cole. \u201cBut German politics has changed. This
quaint enlightenment idea, that it is possible to reach these people with cinema, at a time when one in five German voters say they would be willing to vote for the AfD, when you have three key elections coming up in eastern Germany, which is an AfD stronghold, feels to many like a luxury the Berlinale can no longer afford.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Not everyone agrees. German Culture Minister Claudia Roth has supported the festival\u2019s decision. Her spokesperson said recent revelations have made it very clear\u201d how the AfD is thinking about disenfranchising and deporting a large part of the citizens in this country\u201d making it \u201cunderstandable that filmmakers from Germany, Europe and the world are committed to ensuring that racists and enemies of democracy should have no place at the Berlinale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n But the spokeswoman for Berlin\u2019s mayor, Kai Wegner, while \u201crespecting the decisions of the Berlinale\u201d said they will continue to \u201cact according to the principle of equal treatment\u201d and invite AfD members to their events, at the Berlinale or elsewhere. <\/p>\n

\n The same goes for the popular NRW state reception, a must-attend for the German industry, held in Berlin on Feb. 18. \u201cNothing has changed,\u201d regarding the AfD, an NRW spokeswoman told the German media<\/a> following the Berlinale\u2019s U-Turn, noting that the state government, like Germany\u2019s federal government, is of the opinion that \u201call elected representatives\u201d should be \u201ctreated equally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n With its AfD about-face, Berlinale has probably avoided a PR disaster on opening night. But the debate over its decision is only just beginning.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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A week ago, the Berlin Film Festival was bracing for the worst. Alongside possible pro-Palestinian protests of the sort that took place at Sundance last month, it looked like a much larger demonstration, by German film industry and local activists, might completely shut down the red carpet. There was growing anger over the Berlinale\u2018s decision…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":608686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Palast.jpeg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[82827,147825,148719,137279,147675,124783,32681],"class_list":["post-608685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-berlin","tag-berlin-2024","tag-berlin-film-festival-2024","tag-berlinale","tag-berlinale-2024","tag-international","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}