Berlinale Notes
On Freedom of Speech and the Safety of Our Filmmakers at the Berlinale
October 12, 2026
As we plan for the next edition, we hear that there has been uncertainty and confusion about how the Berlinale protects free speech and the safety of our filmmakers in the festival. We want to take this opportunity to clarify the policies that have been – and continue to – govern our work in practice.
Berlinale's role is to keep open a space for artists, filmmakers and audiences to meet, speak and be heard. We believe it is our responsibility to create an environment where people can listen to one another, and to show a range of films that can sometimes challenge, provoke and connect.
We understand that how we protect artistic freedom and freedom of expression can directly impact our participants’ experience of the festival. Since 2024, we continue to work to provide greater clarity on our existing commitments, though we know that factual and legal explanations alone cannot fully answer the pain, distrust and political disagreement. We are in continuous exchange with attending filmmakers to continue supporting their festival experience, and completely respect the right of artists, audiences and organisations to protest, challenge and express strong criticism. We take these concerns seriously.
The Berlinale does not censor or approve in advance the personal statements of invited filmmakers. Guests are free to speak about their work, their experiences and their political opinions within the broad protections and legal limits of freedom of expression in Germany. The Berlinale does not prohibit wearing symbols of solidarity. We will continue to defend artistic freedom, freedom of expression and the safety and dignity of everyone participating in the festival, standing firmly against discrimination - including antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism.
The Berlinale has no arrangement with the police to monitor political speech. The police do not enter Berlinale event spaces without a clear and legally justified reason. Our own security teams are responsible for safety and are not instructed to monitor or restrict what participants say on stage.
The Berlinale does not disclose the personal information of its guests to authorities on its own initiative. Like every organisation operating in Germany, we would be required to respond to a formal and legally valid order connected to the investigation of a specific alleged offence. To date, the Berlinale has not been legally required to disclose the personal information of a guest.
Our artistic and programming decisions are made independently. The Berlinale is part of Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH (KBB), which is owned by the Federal Republic of Germany. Approximately 40 per cent of the Berlinale's funding comes from the German taxpayer - the rest is earned. Our artistic and programming decisions are made independently, reflecting the protection of artistic freedom under Article 5 of the German Basic Law. Following the 2026 Berlinale, KBB's Supervisory Board made recommendations concerning the future development of the organisation. These were at no point conditions of continuing funding or operations, and do not challenge the integrity of the festival.
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Our detailed answers concerning freedom of expression and security are available in our FAQs - Dialogue & Safety.
We are committed to ensuring the Berlinale remains a place where artists can present challenging work, speak freely within the law, and encounter perspectives that may differ profoundly from their own. This commitment is fundamental to the festival and to our responsibility to the international film community.
In challenging times, we thank you for continuing to be part of our community.
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Gratitude to our Filmmakers and the Industry
noted by Tricia Tuttle
March 6, 2026
İlker Çatak with the Golden Bear for Yellow Letters
We’ve heard from many of you in the last days with questions, and also with concern around a lack of clarity in some of the things you have read about the Berlinale. Let us share a note for all of you here together.
During a uniquely challenging period, the outpouring of support from German cultural organisations, and from the international cinema and film festival communities has been deeply moving. I am so grateful to everyone who reached out, and also feel the responsibility it confers on me and on the Berlinale to lead the way in navigating fraught waters. I want to reassure each of you that I would not have continued as director without a firm belief in the clear and unequivocal reaffirmation of the independence of the Berlinale.
And so let me clarify that the recommendations from the KBB Supervisory Board are in fact recommendations and not conditions of my employment. The Board's renewed expression of faith in my leadership signals their trust in us to consider each proposal seriously and open-mindedly. We will do this in acknowledgement that they share our commitment to the democratic, pluralist principle of free expression. The acceptance of these recommendations, and the manner of their implementation, will be for us to decide. On any points related to wider KBB policies I will be one of four directors of the KBB involved in those discussions. Together, we represent many people working in culture across the Berlinale, Berliner Festspiele with the Gropius Bau, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
I am proud that we have emerged from this difficult moment with a stronger Berlinale, more visibly committed than ever to promoting the vitality of cinema. Where filmmakers from Germany and around the world present their work freely to our endlessly adventurous audiences. Where diverse voices are amplified. And where artistic expression is protected. This is the actual work of a film festival, and my team and I can't wait to get started on that work for the Berlinale's 77th edition.
P.S. İlker Çatak’s Golden Bear winner Yellow Letters opens in Germany this week – and will be released internationally soon. See you in the cinema!
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Open Letter in Support of Tricia Tuttle
noted by the Berlinale team
February 26, 2026
The Berlinale team looks back on a successful festival 2026, realised collectively and met with a strong response from filmmakers from around the world as well as tens of thousands of audience members in the cinemas. In light of the ongoing debates and recent developments, more than 500 Berlinale employees (as of 26 February, 8:45 a.m.: 510) have now jointly shared this message with policymakers and the public.
We, the staff, contract employees and freelancers of the Berlinale and associated institutions, representing a plurality of perspectives, speak with one voice in unanimous support of the extraordinary Tricia Tuttle as the Director of the Berlinale.
We have all worked closely with Tricia during her tenure and witnessed firsthand the clarity, integrity, and artistic vision that she has brought to the Berlinale. She has made the many hundreds of Berlinale colleagues feel individually respected and collectively, extremely proud of our achievements over the course of two difficult years.
We do not exaggerate when we say, as one, that it is unlikely the KBB Supervisory Board could have appointed a more intelligent, ethical and responsive leader for the Berlinale, nor one more dedicated to the core principles that make this festival a vital platform for cinema in Germany and internationally.
We hope this message will go some way to communicating the extent of the admiration and loyalty Tricia has inspired in all who are invested in the future of the Berlinale, and the future of cinema.
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On Speaking, Cinema and Politics
noted by Tricia Tuttle
February 14, 2026
There are many different kinds of art, and many different ways of being political. Individual approaches vary greatly.
People have called for free speech at the Berlinale. Free speech is happening at the Berlinale. But increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer any question put to them. They are criticised if they do not answer. They are criticised if they answer and we do not like what they say. They are criticised if they cannot compress complex thoughts into a brief sound bite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they were speaking about something else.
It is hard to see the Berlinale and so many hundreds of filmmakers and people who work on this festival distilled into something we do not always recognise in the online and media discourse. Over the next ten days at the Berlinale, filmmakers are speaking constantly. They are speaking through their work. They are speaking about their work. They are speaking, at times, about geopolitics that may or may not be related to their films. It is a large, complex festival. A festival that people value in so many different ways and for so many reasons.
There are 278 films in this year’s programme. They carry many perspectives. There are films about genocide, about sexual violence in war, about corruption, about patriarchal violence, about colonialism or abusive state power. There are filmmakers here who have faced violence and genocide in their lives, who may face prison, exile, and even death for the work they have made or the positions they have taken. They come to Berlin and share their work with courage. This is happening now. Are we amplifying those voices enough?
There are also filmmakers who come to the Berlinale with different political aims: to ask how we can talk about art as art, and how we can keep cinemas alive so that independent films still have a place to be seen and discussed. In a media environment dominated by crisis, there is less oxygen left for serious conversation about film or culture at all, unless it can be folded as well into a news agenda.
Some films express a politics with a small “p”: they examine power in daily life, who and what is seen or unseen, included or excluded. Others engage with Politics with a capital “P”: governments, state policy, institutions of power and justice. This is a choice. Speaking to power happens in visible ways, and sometimes in quieter personal ones. Across the history of the Berlinale, many artists have made human rights central to their work. Others have made films which we see as quietly radical political acts which focus on small, fragile moments of care, beauty, love, or on people who are invisible to most of us, people who are alone. They help us make connections to our shared humanity through their movies. And in a broken world this is precious.
What links so many of these filmmakers at the Berlinale is a deep respect for human dignity. We do not believe there is a filmmaker screening in this festival who is indifferent to what is happening in this world, who does not take the rights, the lives and the immense suffering of people in Gaza and the West Bank, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Sudan, in Iran, in Ukraine, in Minneapolis, and in a terrifying number of places, seriously.
Artists are free to exercise their right of free speech in whatever way they choose. Artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival’s previous or current practices over which they have no control. Nor should they be expected to speak on every political issue raised to them unless they want to.
We continue to do this work because we love cinema but we also hope and believe watching films can change things even if that is the glacial shift of changing people, one heart or mind at a time.
We thank our team, guests, juries, our filmmakers, and the many others engaged with the Berlinale for cool heads in hot times.
Please also visit our FAQs - Dialogue & Safety