The director of the Berlinale film festival has agreed to step down after two years on the job following pressure from Germany’s culture minister in connection with anti-Israel propaganda at the event, the Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Tricia Tuttle, 56, and German Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer “agreed that it is untenable to continue” Tuttle’s leadership of the renowned film festival, said unnamed sources from the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin, the nonprofit that runs the annual festival, according to Bild.
The decision on Tuttle’s replacement also followed her posing in a group photo with the team of Syrian director Abdallah al-Khatib and a Palestinian Liberation Organization flag, Bild reported. The paper featured a picture of this, which it said was sent out by the Berlinale press team. It was not featured in the photos section of the festival’s website on Wednesday.
At Sunday’s Berlinale gala, the festival’s closing event, Carsten Schneider, the federal minister for the environment, nature conservation, climate protection and nuclear safety, walked out of the venue. He did this after al-Khatib accused Israel of genocide and Germany of complicity, and displayed a keffiyeh. Al-Khatib received an award for his film “Chronicle from the Siege,” which was inspired by Syria’s civil war.
Weimer, of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany, has reversed course on matters related to Israel from the policies pursued by his predecessor as culture minister, Claudia Roth of the left-wing Green Party.
On his first day in office, Weimer invited Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, to a meeting . The Council has long warned against the spread of antisemitism under the guise of Palestinian and Arab nationalism.
When the Munich Philharmonic’s Israeli conductor Lahav Shani was banned from performing in Belgium last year, Weimer invited the orchestra to Berlin for a solidarity concert. Under Weimer, German officials opposed attempts to boycott Israel at the Eurovision Song Festival.
On Wednesday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry highlighted on X a comment by Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, who wrote: “German society must finally realize that large parts of the so-called ‘pro-Palestinian’ movements are in fact not only enemies of Israel, but also of Germany. They are not interested in a better life for Palestinians.” The ministry did not indicate this was in connection with the Berlinale.
Prosor wrote this comment in connection with reports that people who had demonstrated for Israel in Kiel, northern Germany, on Saturday, were attacked after the events in two separate incidents.
Jan Schellbach, the chairman of the German-Israeli Society of Schleswig-Holstein, was assaulted by three masked men while sitting in a car with another person, suggesting that he had been followed from the rally and attacked, the NDR broadcaster reported.
Another man was attacked by three or four people while carrying a “pro-Israel sign” after the rally elsewhere in Kiel, the report said. It did not indicate whether the alleged victims were hurt in the attack.
