Politics overshadowed the films at this year's Berlinale. John MACDOUGALL / AFP via Getty Images Nine days into the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard and a band of New Wave insurgents brought the Croisette to a halt, shuttering the world’s most glamorous movie showcase in solidarity with student protests sweeping France. Nearly six decades on, the question hanging over this year’s edition is whether geopolitics — from Gaza to Iran — could again hijack the narrative, or whether Cannes will once more prove it can absorb the shock without losing control.
This year’s Berlin Film Festival provides a cautionary tale. Fierce debate over the war in Gaza ignited a political firestorm that nearly cost festival director Tricia Tuttle her job. Jury president Wim Wenders’ insistence that “we have to stay out of politics” was swiftly overtaken by filmmakers who refused to do any such thing. Onstage statements on Gaza — Syrian-Palestinian director Abdallah Al-Khatib, winner of the Berlinale Perspectives section for his drama Chronicles of a Siege, called out the German government as being “partners in the genocide in Gaza by Israel” — triggered an institutional backlash. It all played out in public, generating far more headlines than any of the films in competition.
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Producer Mike Downey, the former head of the European Film Academy, sees the similar political fault lines running through Cannes this year. “I think something like [what happened in Berlin] could happen in Cannes, if Cannes doesn’t take control of the narrative,” he says. “Neutrality is sort of impossible, as Berlin and Wim found out.”
There is no shortage of combustible material. The war in Gaza remains a rallying point for artists and activists (Palestinian director Rakan Mayasi will be in Cannes to screen his latest, Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep in Un Certain Regard), while escalating tensions around Iran — and festival lineup heavy with Iranian voices, including Asghar Farhadi, Pegah Ahangarani, Karim Lakzadeh, and Mahsa Karampour — are certain to add another geopolitical layer. With two prominent Russian directors in the official selection, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur is in Competition, Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam will open Directors’ Fortnight, Russia’s war on Ukraine could also prove a flashpoint.
At Cannes last year, politics were there from the start. The opening ceremony featured a tribute to slain Gaza photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, the subject of Sepideh Farsi’s documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hands and Walk, from jury president Juliette Binoche, while Robert De Niro used his honorary Palme d’Or moment to attack Donald Trump. Offstage, more than 300 filmmakers, including Binoche, Javier Bardem, Joaquin Phoenix, and Pedro Pascal, signed an open letter condemning the industry’s “silence” on Gaza. The temperature was high but, unlike in Berlin, the festival never lost its footing. The political debate never overtook the discussion about the films. Tuesday’s jury opening press conference of Cannes 2026 featured jurors’ comments on how politics and films belong together, including from Demi Moore and president Park Chan-wook, while Paul Laverty also shared outspoken thoughts.
Salma Abu Ayyash of the Palestinian Film Institute draws a sharp distinction between Berlin, where she says it felt Palestinian directors and their supporters “felt threatened” — some in the German media called for Al-Khatib to be arrested and charged with “hate speech” — and Cannes, where “we feel very safe and very appreciated. It’s not an institutional thing, but there’s a network of people in Cannes that make us feel heard. It makes a lot of difference for us when we go to a festival where we feel the police are chasing us, versus a festival where doors are open, and speech is protected.”
Cannes, says Downey, remains “one of the last bastions for cultural integrity” in an increasingly compromised festival landscape. “It’s always a great place for voices to be heard, whether they’re environmental, or LGBTQ, whether it’s about what’s happening in Iran or Gaza, or its about the electricians are going on strike, Cannes has always been a place for troublemakers. It’s probably why I like it.”
But, in contrast to Berlin, Cannes, post-68, has been adept at keeping the troublemakers from taking over. The festival has spent years refining a playbook that allows dissent but contains it. A strict “no protest” rule governs the red carpet — security shuts down political demonstrations as quickly as they do selfie shots — and the festival’s tightly choreographed premieres and ceremonies leave little room for disruption. The emphasis, always, is on the show — the spectacle of cinema as global industry and cultural event. Political debates are largely found within the films themselves, or in demonstrations and discussions held a safe distance from the Palais.
“I’ve just been struck by the fact that the last two years I was in Cannes, there weren’t any scandals in the way that Berlin is finding it impossible to avoid at the moment,” says Philip Oltermann, European Culture Editor for the Guardian. “Cannes is still show business [and] I get the impression that people who go there end up sort of following the rules. They might make very challenging films but you don’t have the situation where, at the awards ceremony, the artists clash with the organizers.”
Politics, from Gaza to Iran, from Russia to the White House, will be everyone on the Croisette this year. The question is whether it remains embedded in the films — and the conversations around them — or breaks through and takes center stage, sparking the kind of institutional crisis that engulfed Berlin. If history is any guide, Cannes will let the noise in, but keep the focus where it wants it: on the films, and on the show.
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