Key Highlights
- But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics.
- We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.” The comments surprised many festival guests and journalists.
- In a statement Friday announcing her withdrawal, The God of Small Things author Roy, who had been planning to attend a screening of her recently restored 1989 film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, called the jury comments “unconscionable.” In the statement to Indian outlet The Wire, the Indian author said: “To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping.
- It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time – when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.” She added: “Although I have been profoundly disturbed by the positions taken by the German government and various German cultural institutions on Palestine, I have always received political solidarity when I have spoken to German audiences about my views on the genocide in Gaza.” She concluded: “If the greatest filmmakers and artists of our time cannot stand up and say so, they should know that history will judge them.
- I am shocked and disgusted.
