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Statement: Not in Our Name TU on TU Berlin’s Response to Genocide

How the Technical University Berlin abandoned academic freedom for political obedience

The destruction of Gaza’s education system is not collateral damage—it is intentional. It is systematic. And the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin), despite its claims of neutrality and academic freedom, has chosen silence over solidarity, complicity over conscience, and political obedience over even the most minimal moral and ethical duty.

Over six months ago, we submitted a detailed report to TU Berlin’s leadership. It documented how the university is deeply complicit in the Genocide unfolding in Palestine, be it indirectly through continuing its cooperation with institutions involved in the Israeli military apparatus, or directly by allowing exchange programs to illegally stolen land. We demanded an investigation based on the evidence we provided, and to cut ties, as it has done with Russia, when our findings were confirmed. Not only did the university refuse to act, it refused even to look.

As part of our demands that were sent along with that report, we urged administration to take a basic moral stance and publicly condemn the complete destruction of Gaza’s education system. Every single university has been bombed. Over 95% of schools were damaged. Over 720,000 students had their education completely interrupted. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 13,419 students and 651 educators have been killed and 21,653 injured in what can only be described as a systematic campaign to destroy the very possibility of knowledge in Gaza. We called this what it is: scholasticide—the deliberate erasure of a people’s right to learn, teach, and exist. 

In response, TU Berlin spoke proudly of its commitment to anti-discrimination, academic freedom, and historical role as a university that fights injustice. They write of awareness teams, consultation offices, and the importance of peaceful protest all while refusing to name the people whose lives were erased.

Not once did it acknowledge even a single murdered Palestinian student or scholar. Not Nada Al-Hasayna, the pharmacy student who carried her name tag every day so her body could be identified if she was killed. Not Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student at Al-Azhar University, who was burned alive while still attached to an IV alongside his mother. Not Professor Dr. Sufyan Tayeh, president of the Islamic University of Gaza and one of the world’s top scientists, killed with his family. Not Professor Refaat Al-Areer, poet and literature lecturer, who wrote “If I Must Die” before being bombed to death with his brother and sister alongside four of her children.

And yet, in every public statement made by TU Berlin and the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA), one thing remains consistent: they carefully avoid using the word Palestinian. Not once do they acknowledge the people being killed, displaced, starved, and erased. They speak of “violence,” of “conflict,” of “victims” in vague terms—but never name those who are suffering most. They have expressed solidarity with Israeli academics, reaffirmed partnerships with Israeli institutions, and condemned attacks against Israel. But they have never condemned the killing of Palestinian scholars, or the destruction of every single university in Gaza. They have never shown even the most basic empathy for Palestinian life—they have never even once used the word Palestine or Palestinian.

This silence is not neutrality, it is complicity, it is political obedience. 

It is even more appalling when viewed in the context of Israeli academia’s open incitement to hate. We can name the Tel Aviv University professor Uzy Raby who said on a radio interview: “Anyone who stays [in northern Gaza] will be judged… as a terrorist and will go through either a process of starvation or a process of extermination”. Another lecturer at the same university, Dr. Harel Chorev, declared that he would “sign with both hands” a military plan that called for the forced removal of civilians from Gaza. And at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University, researchers openly proposed turning Gaza into a “modernized” area emptied of Palestinians through “voluntary emigration,” enforced by “sustained military pressure”, a thinly veiled ethnic cleansing proposal.

The few who dissent, mostly Palestinians, face severe repression. Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a prominent Palestinian scholar at Hebrew University, was suspended, publicly denounced by her institution, and later arrested for calling for a ceasefire and criticizing Zionism. Over 160 Palestinian students in Israeli universities have faced disciplinary measures for minor expressions of grief or solidarity. Some have had their home addresses and photos circulated online. Others were expelled. Threatened. Silenced. And while those who advocate justice are punished, those who advocate atrocity are platformed, funded, and celebrated.

In the midst of this, TU Berlin dares to speak of “academic freedom.” But what we are witnessing is its complete collapse. Academic freedom does not mean cooperating with warmongers. It does not mean partnering with institutions that help build drone systems used to flatten homes, or produce white papers about ethnic cleansing. It does not mean turning away while your academic counterparts are starved, bombed, and executed. Academic freedom means having the right to say: we refuse

We refuse to be complicit.

We refuse to normalize genocide. 

We refuse to treat apartheid as just another academic perspective.

If Israeli Academia insists on staying corrupted to its core, then in the name of academic freedom, TU Berlin has the duty to cut ties. Its refusal is not grounded in academic principles, its loyalty is not to truth, not to justice and not its stated mission, but to fear. Germany’s history is invoked to silence critics, but the real lesson of that history, of where blind obedience to power leads, is ignored.

TU Berlin once served a fascist state. Today, it serves a state taking part in a genocide.One might think an institution that once served under and supported a fascist state would understand the dangers of “just following orders”. But instead, the TU Berlin Kanzler, a sitting SPD politician, proudly oversees this cowardice. Unwilling to challenge the political tide, unwilling to take a stance, unwilling to say, ‘‘enough.’’

A Warning to Other Despots

Former Philippine President Duterte’s Trial in ICC Opens New Frontier for Filipinos’ Struggle for Justice


01/06/2025

March 11, 2025 was a momentous day for victims of Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s (FPRD) bloody fake war on drugs.  It was when Duterte’s bluster ended as he was arrested by the Philippine National Police (PNP) by virtue of the warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and was flown to the Hague, Netherlands.

This was poetic justice for the Filipino people who suffered from state-instigated terrorism under Duterte’s presidency. FPRD’s trial in the ICC opens a new frontier for Filipinos’ struggle for justice and serves as a warning for other despots.

ICC jurisdiction over Duterte

The ICC’s decision to pursue the investigation into Duterte’s war on drugs is not only lawful—it is essential for upholding human rights and international accountability.  Duterte is the first Asian leader to be tried at the ICC. 

Under Philippine laws, the President is immune from civil, criminal, and administrative suits while holding office. This immunity covers both official and personal acts, as long as the President remains in office. However, after leaving office, the individual no longer enjoys this privilege. In line with developments in international law, certain crimes, such as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, may not be covered by presidential immunity. Although the Philippines does not have a specific ruling addressing this directly, international tribunals, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), have held that heads of state are not immune from prosecution for international crimes.

The ICC’s jurisdiction over the Philippines has been a topic of heated debate, especially since the country officially withdrew from the Rome Statute in 2019. Duterte and his allies argue that this withdrawal nullifies any ICC investigation.

Feeling threatened by the ICC investigation, Duterte while still in office withdrew from the ICC on March 17,2018 which took effect on March 17, 2018. The Philippines signed the Rome Statute on December 28,2000 and was accepted as member of the ICC on August 30,2011.  

 This matter was brought to the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) for decision. On March 16, 2021 the high tribunal ruled that: President Duterte cannot evade investigation by the ICC prosecutor on the charge that he committed the “crime against humanity of murder” in his “war on drugs” by invoking the country’s withdrawal from the court, which he ordered in March 2018, taking effect a year later.

“Withdrawing from the Rome Statute does not discharge a state party from the obligations as a member,” the ruling says.

“Consequently, liability for the alleged summary killings and other atrocities committed in the course of the war on drugs is not nullified or negated…” the SC declared.

It must be noted that the Philippines has enacted REPUBLIC ACT NO. 9851 titled “AN ACT DEFINING AND PENALIZING CRIMES AGAINST INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW, GENOCIDE AND OTHER CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, ORGANIZING JURISDICTION, DESIGNATING SPECIAL COURTS, AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES” on December 11, 2009. Basically it is a mirror copy of the Rome Statute applied to national context.  This legislation predates Philippine membership in the ICC.

No less that the current Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Remulla testified in the Senate hearing concerning the legality of Duterte’s turn-over to the ICC, that no serious effort at investigation, m against Duterte  in Philippine courts after he was replaced by now President Marcos Jr..

Philippine presidents serve only a six year term without reelection.  Duterte’s term started on June 30, 2016 and ended on June 30,2022.

The principle of complementarity governs the exercise of the ICC jurisdiction.  The Statute recognizes that States have the first responsibility and right to prosecute international crimes. The ICC may only exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems fail to do so, including where they purport to act but in reality are unwilling or unable to  genuinely carry out proceedings. The principle of complementarity is based both on respect for the primary jurisdiction of States and on considerations of efficiency and effectiveness, since States will generally have the best access to evidence and witnesses and the resources to carry out proceedings. Moreover, there are limits on the number of prosecutions the ICC, a single institution, can feasibly conduct.

Duterte’s crime against humanity

A review of President Rodrigo Duterte’s fourth year in office included a damning UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) report on widespread extrajudicial killings, the passage of a widely contested anti-terrorism legislation and a bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

According to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, between 1 July 2016 and 31 January 2020 the police killed 5,601 people.  Various government agencies have put out conflicting figures and have proved reluctant to disclose documents relating to the killings to the Supreme Court and the Commission on Human Rights. 

There are also reports of widespread drug-related killings perpetrated by unidentified “vigilantes”. Duterte administration’s 2017 year-end report mentions 16,355 “homicide cases under investigation” as accomplishments in the fight against illegal drugs. This prompted the Supreme Court to raise the possibility that the killings were State-sponsored. Noting that drugs operations by the police and homicides perpetrated by unidentified persons resulted in 20,322 deaths from July 1, 2016 to November 27, 2017, the Supreme Court demanded an explanation for the staggering average of nearly 40 deaths per day. In March 2019, the police claimed that although 29,000 deaths were labelled as “deaths under inquiry” between July 1,2016 and February 4,2019, only 3,062 (9.47 per cent) were drug-related. A previous study, however, had found that the police severely underreported the percentage of drug-related killings among homicides.

The noisy well-funded Duterte troll farm creates an illusion that majority of Filipinos don’t agree that Duterte face trial in the ICC.  They impact significantly in the political discourse in the Philippines. Filipinos spend so much time online — they average a staggering 10 hours a day!

However, poll survey on the issue show that majority of Filipinos favor that Duterte to undergo trial for his case of crimes against humanity.  Duterte’s powerful influence in the Philippines make it impossible for victims of his bloody war on drugs to have justice. They support the ICC.

Philippines should rejoin the ICC

It is to the best interest of Filipinos that the Philippines should rejoin the ICC.  The international Tribunal serves as the court of last resort for ordinary Filipinos. The judicial system in the Philippines is heavily skewed in favor of the rich and powerful, justice is denied to those who are economically and politically disadvantaged.  Even the UN OHCHR supports this idea.

Duterte is the second former Philippine president to be tried outside of the country. The first was former Dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the father of now president Marcos Jr.. Like Duterte, he was also tried outside the Philippines because  it was impossible to hold him accountable for his crimes against the Filipino people in the country.  Marcos Sr. was tried and convicted in Hawaii District Court in the U.S.A. after he was ousted as martial law dictator in the Philippines.

Today international developments favor the strengthening of international tribunals as courts of last resort for aggrieved peoples and states.  Even powerful states that hold themselves above the so-called “rules based international order” are held to account for their international crimes.

Established in 2002 and based in The Hague, the ICC is a criminal court that can bring cases against individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity. In October 2024, there were 125 states parties to the Rome Statute.

ICC is different from the ICJ (International Court of Justice) as the latter tries cases involving countries, while the former is a criminal court, which brings cases against individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity. While the ICJ is an organ of the United Nations, the ICC is legally independent of the UN, although it is endorsed by the General Assembly.

While not all 193 UN Member States are parties to the ICC, it can launch investigations and open cases related to alleged crimes committed on the territory or by a national of a State party to the ICC or of a State that has accepted its jurisdiction.

As war continues in Ukraine and Gaza, the ICC is coming under the spotlight, due to actions such as its issuing of an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023.

Recently it issued a request for arrest warrant  for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three leaders of Hamas, the de facto authorities in Gaza.

In the midst of a world marked by conflict and accountability crises, the conspicuous absence of major powers like the United States, Russia and China from the ICC casts a long shadow over the ideals of international justice.

Their refusal to sign up to the international court has sparked much heated debate since it was first set up in The Hague, Netherlands more than two decades ago.

Supporters of the International Criminal Court accuse the three global powers of hampering the court’s important investigations into war crimes, while opponents accuse the court of lacking political independence.

On 6 February 2025, United States President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order authorizing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. This Executive Order is intended to stop the ICC from undertaking its independent mandate. It also poses a significant threat to the ICC and its staff.  UN experts strongly condemned the move, calling it “an attack on global rule of law” that undermines international justice.

The US sanctions pose a dire threat to the ICC, as well as to the broader international rule of law and its multilateral system. But there is still hope.

Many countries continue to support the ICC. In June 2024, 74 ICC member states affirmed their commitment to fighting impunity. After President Trump’s recent Executive Order, European Union foreign ministers declared their ‘unwavering support’ for the Court.

Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said all EU countries must carry out arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as members of the legal institution.

“It is not a political decision. It’s a decision of a court, of a court of justice,” Borrell said while in Amman. “This decision is a binding decision,” he added.

All members of the ICC are legally bound to carry out the decisions of the court, Borrell said. All of the European Union’s 27 member states (except Hungary) are members of the ICC, this includes them as well, he said. 

Some political observers may hold the view that filing cases against perpetrators of heinous crimes in the ICC  is a “hit of miss” thing, but for the marginalized Filipinos, the arrest and trial of former Philippine President Duterte in the ICC is a landmark achievement against impunity of a brutal tyrant who can never be tried effectively in the Philippines.  It is also a strong warning to all despots in other parts of the world.

Red Flag: The German Bourgeoisie Suddenly Notices the Genocide in Gaza

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin analyzes a radical shift in ruling-class rhetoric


31/05/2025

I was away from Berlin for almost a month, and I returned just in time for a whiplash-inducing shift in Germany’s official discourse. For 19 months, all politicians and journalists offered unwavering and passionate support for the genocide in Gaza, not just in the form of declarations about “Israel’s right to defend itself” and “Hamas command centers under hospitals,” but also in the form of bombs and bullets.

This extremely unpopular policy (with around 80 percent of the country disagreeing) has been reinforced with unprecedented repression, including assaults, firings, and deportations. Supposedly, this was about “learning from history” and “protecting Jewish life” — yet Jews have been vastly overrepresented among the victims of police violence and official cancellations

From one day to the next, however, the entire German regime changed its position. This started with a video from the Greens last Friday. Luise Amtsberg, who denied Israel was committing war crimes only last year, suddenly expressed concern that “there are hardly any hospitals left” in Gaza (I wonder what happened to them!). This is the same Green Party whose leader declared last October that bombing hospitals was ok (“civilian sites could lose their protected status if terrorists abuse this status”).

It’s easy for the Greens, thrown into opposition, to rediscover their humanitarian conscience. But this was followed by the conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz, who spoke on TV the following Monday about a “humanitarian tragedy” in Gaza that could “no longer be justified with the struggle against Hamas terrorism.” The same politician who insisted on inviting Netanyahu to Berlin despite an ICC arrest warrant is now accusing Israel of violating international law. The next day, Merz’s foreign minister made vague threats of “further steps” that could include a stop to weapons shipments. 

Even Felix Klein, the government’s non-Jewish “Antisemitism Czar,” who not long ago endorsed Trump’s plan to expel two million people from Gaza, started criticizing Israel. This is strange, because Klein’s job is defaming anyone who protests against the genocide in Gaza, including Jews. By Tuesday, he spoke of Israel “starving the Palestinians and deliberately, dramatically worsening the humanitarian situation.”

Newspapers and TV stations have also abruptly changed their line, just like Oceania in 1984

These politicians and journalists have been supporting war crimes for 19 months — what explains the sudden shift? When asked directly (“Where does this … criticism suddenly come from? The things we see now, we have been seeing for weeks and months”), Klein could only stammer unintelligibly.

So where does this really come from? Der Spiegel published a ridiculous title about Merz “long remaining silent” — even though a brief look at the magazine’s own reporting shows Merz being very loud about his support for genocide.

This definitely has nothing to do with morals. Germany’s capitalist politicians have long abandoned any claim to defending humanitarian principles. But it also has little to do with fears of future ICC persecutions. These imperialist politicians can be certain that the institutions of so-called international law will never go against the interest of imperialism.

This has more to do with banal electoral schedules, with politicians more willing to take risks after the voting is over. All of them were terrified of being accused of antisemitism by the far-right tabloid BILD or any of the numerous state-funded pro-Zionist NGOs. There are herd dynamics at work: As soon as one of them sticks out their neck, others are less afraid.

I suspect the main reason, however, is a shift in U.S. foreign policy under Trump, who has been increasingly giving Netanyahu the cold shoulder in pursuit of his own interests in the Middle East. This is a notable difference to Biden, who had a deep ideological commitment to Zionism. With U.S. interest in Gaza waning, the Europe’s rulers don’t want to be the last ones holding the bag when it comes to supporting genocide.

This is not about morals and not about public opinion in Germany — it’s more about German imperialism’s investments and “soft power” in the Arab world, which are suffering terrible losses. 

Despite the new rhetoric, the Greens, the CDU, and the rest of the bunch have declared their intention to keep sending weapons to Israel. They might be “concerned” about the “humanitarian catastrophe” — but they want to keep facilitating it. This is all empty posturing. 

As the full account of the carnage becomes harder to deny, politicians want to get their opposition on the record. Omar El Akkad predicted: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. We are witnessing the first careful steps in this direction. This rhetorical shift is not accountability — it is the German bourgeoisie’s latest attempt to avoid accountability.

Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

Some Thoughts on Responses to the Gaza Genocide

It is great that new people have noticed the genocide in Gaza but we still need an independent political pole

Ever since Israel’s genocidal intentions became evident in October 2023, we’ve witnessed successive “roads to Damascus” by various layers of people, politically situated at different, sometimes completely opposite, parts of the political spectrum.

The motivations for these conversions range from sincere critical self-reflection, to facing a more conducive political climate to express criticism, to blatant opportunism, to the fear of public opinion and/or the possibility of being faced with legal consequences of being complicit in the “crime of all crimes”.

The first wave occurred relatively quickly. It was a layer of “soft left” intellectuals, academics, journalists, and others, who in the immediate aftermath of October 7th peddled the narrative that somehow the main issue was not the predictable result of 16 years of incremental genocide of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli state, but the fact that some leftists were “cheering for Hamas”. 

This layer quickly uttered the word “genocide”, even as it attempted to impose its own framing on the debate, which censored terms such as “resistance”. In Germany, this takes the form of an increasingly unhealthy obsession with the “German psyche”, as if these issues somehow take precedence over the broader dynamics of state and class formation (both in Germany and Israel), as well as imperialism. The genocidal onslaught was being implicitly placed in the context of a “global far right resurgence”, which is, of course, true to some extent but does not represent the entire picture.

My suspicion is that these theoretical weaknesses partly lie in the reverberating influence of a kind of thinking which oscillates between early 2000s alter-globalisation autonomism and its silence on the realities of inter-state competition on the one hand, and a left reformist instinct of trailing “public opinion” on the other.

The second wave concerns left reformist figureheads and political forces that refused to call this a genocide immediately, such as Bernie Sanders, who until today, quite brazenly, insists on calling this “Netanyahu’s war”, as if somehow any other political force in Israel would act differently. 

It also includes parties like Die Linke in Germany. After one year of genocide, Linke leader Ines Schwerdtner was still describing October 7th as an example of “eliminatory antisemitism”, thereby decontextualising it and relativising the Holocaust. Now, and riding the coattails of a global insurgent movement, these forces feel more comfortable in expressing more robust criticisms of Israel, although, as the saying goes, “too little, too late”.

The third and fourth waves are occurring simultaneously. On the one hand, we have celebrities and intellectuals in full awareness of the detrimental effects that continuing silence could have on their social capital (e.g. Piers Morgan). On the other hand, we have Merz, Starmer, Macron, the German Greens, and other cretins, who are now discovering that Israel “has gone too far”.

I don’t agree with the defeatist sentiment that these people realise that the genocide is now over (“one day, everyone will have been against this”) and are now ritualistically saying “sorry”. This amounts to a bizarre underestimation on the proven Palestinian capacity for resistance, as well as a very pessimistic appraisal of the strength of imperialism in the region, of which Israel is a constituent component.

I think that this has more to do with public opinion, reinforced by the actions of movements in different countries, as well as by the real fear of legal consequences for complicity. Not that Merz, Macron and co cared about international law before. But a more transactional foreign policy under Trump makes everything more unpredictable, and these people might be motivated by the need to cling on to some semblance (not necessarily the substance) of a “rules-based order”.

We can make of these successive waves whatever we want – genuine introspection, the power of the movement in the streets, the inability of Israel to act according to the role assigned to it by its backers.

Nevertheless: While all these developments are welcome, those who realised pretty soon what was going to happen, who had studied the dynamics as they developed in the preceding decades, who had placed the issue in a wider regional and global framework of what are in the end pretty mundane capitalist and imperialist interests, should develop or further build their own independent political pole, instead of trailing celebrity intellectuals, “brave journalists”, or deciding that “now is the time to work in X or Y party” “to be more effective”.

XPOSED Queer Film Festival: “We want queer people to see themselves on screen”

Interview with David Bakum, one of the programmers from the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin.


30/05/2025

Xposed Queer Film Festival Berlin

Could you start by telling our readers about yourself and your background? 

I’m David. I grew up in Germany, and my family is from Ukraine. I moved to Scotland for my film and theatre studies degree at university, and now I have come back to Germany this year for a job, but also to see how Germany has changed, if at all. My job is in political education with a small organisation, but while doing my studies, I started working at film festivals and finding out what felt right for me. I’m slowly understanding that I like to curate, so I’m still new to that, but I’m coming into a routine and trying to expand what it means to be a curator and learning how to do it.

You are one of the programmers at the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin—can you tell us more about the festival and what the vision is? 

The festival started in 2006; this will be the 19th edition. It started as a passion project by a couple of people here in Berlin—which it still is to date. I would consider us to be a collective of queer people who either live in Berlin, are tied to Berlin somehow, or are simply tied to the festival, who come together every year to organise it. Many of us are migrants; some of us grew up in Germany, but we face different layers of discrimination here. It’s a political festival because we are people who are affected by politics in this country. As a festival, we try to show different perspectives of what it means to be queer, but also what queerness could be—not only tied to sexuality or gender but also to what convention society has and how queerness goes against that and tries to dismantle it. We try to show global perspectives of queerness, so we try to involve many different views of what it means to be queer in this world. Whether that is successful, that’s always debatable. 

How would you define queerness or queer cinema? 

At the moment, we have five curators, and we all work together to curate the programme. All of us have different ways of defining queerness for ourselves, so it’s enriching when we watch films and discuss together if they fit the festival or not. We often discuss a film and say, “This is so XPOSED”. I guess at this point, we have a sort of style, something you can expect, and the overlap is about imagining film outside of what’s on the mainstream. There are many ways of what queerness could be—one is that we want to see stories of queerness told by queer people. Very few of our films, if any, are made by non-queer filmmakers—our focus is not only on the director but if it’s a queer production. Sometimes you can sense how people have worked—you can tell if it was queer inclusive, rather than just pink-washing. Often, we are in touch with filmmakers whose work we know already and keep track of, so that’s how we get a feeling for whether they actually practice what they put into the film. At the same time, queerness doesn’t have to be in the topics of the films; it can be about the form. Very rarely do we take something that follows an Aristotelian arch. It’s more about playing with form, with convention, and then just destroying that. There are very original films that provoke us to see something for the very first time in a certain way. That’s what we are usually looking for. 

XPOSED screens both features and short films, as well as newer and older films. On your website, it also mentions that you hope that your curatorial choices counteract oppressive structures. Can you say more about the selection process? How do you decide what is a good fit for the festival? 

There are two ways in which films get to us: we have open submissions that people can submit for free, and we also do our own research, so the team is always on the lookout not only for what’s going on at festivals, but also in smaller queer productions—including locally, and we like to focus on migrant queer cinema in Berlin. Sometimes, we only need one person watching a film, and they really see why it’s important to give it the space. Very often, it happens that we all agree. It can be that there is a topic that is important at the moment to give certain people a voice, and in those cases it needs to be included so that people come to the festival and see a glimpse of what is one way of being queer in that country or region, for example. Even if it’s a 5-minute short, it can already trigger something and move people to imagine what queerness is in that country, to want to know more, and to want to research, and think of ways in which they can show solidarity or support. Sometimes, there are interesting discussions of why someone thinks a certain film is “XPOSED”, and someone else doesn’t agree, but very rarely do we have a strong disagreement. This is because we are all very open to understanding our different positionalities and experiences of how we live in Berlin or elsewhere. We also try to learn from each other and what each curator found in their practice.

The submissions come from many different countries. We try to spread the word as much as possible, but there are many regions from which we do not get submissions from. For those, we wonder if it’s because of the political situation, access to filmmaking, access to finding out about festivals, or even filmmakers not being interested in showing films in Germany. 

Since your 20th anniversary is happening soon, when reflecting on the festival, what is the importance of having a film festival dedicated to queerness in a city like Berlin? 

There are many other amazing film festivals and venues. I think what XPOSED does well is create a community around the festival, people who look forward to it every year. We also tried to make it more accessible, even though inflation and funding have been difficult. That also makes it harder to claim that we are accessible because it’s this vicious cycle of wanting to be for the queer community but also being queer ourselves and not having the best access to things. We want queer people to see themselves on screen and imagine what their future could be like, but also to irritate people who might disagree if they happen to be at our festival. 

Some of the films would struggle to find a spot at a festival, either because there are requirements that are not accessible to short films, or some wouldn’t get picked for their stories, for their aesthetics, or their production budgets. For many people, it’s a big opportunity to be able to premiere in Berlin. 

We don’t have a lot of funding to fly people in, but we try to take care of each other by hosting people, offering meals, or even spontaneously hosting a film screening at 10 pm on a Sunday because many people want to watch it. Those are tiny things we can do, but it’s important to connect people who share a struggle and feel they are not alone. 

XPOSED receives public funding. At the end of last year, the Berlin Senate announced a 12% cut to the city’s cultural budget. The campaign Berlin Ist Kultur was created in response, to protest it. What are your thoughts on that? 

I am still trying to understand how it affects us, and we are looking for funding opportunities all the time. Fewer things are accessible to us for application. I also feel that different things are stopping from existing in the social and cultural sector; it’s scary. How can we even still run a festival for queer people, if they will not have the money to attend; it’s definitely an existential threat to us and many venues and festivals. We feel affected and are in solidarity with everyone impacted. It’s sad that suddenly it feels like we are in a competition for who deserves the funding over each other. We are taking a moment to reflect on where we can look for funding without it being taken away from other affected communities.

Part of what you’ve been highlighting is that a film festival is not only a cultural and artistic event, but also a political one. You published a statement denouncing the actions of the German government. What can you tell us about that, and especially about your commitment to not “censor yourselves from your responsibility as a festival”? 

It’s an ongoing discussion within the team. We never had to have a moment to get each other on the same page—we always knew we shared and relied on each other’s values. Since October 2023, there has been this urge in Germany to position yourself politically—but before then, it was already important to be political; since then, we felt we should position ourselves because saying nothing is already a statement, and we owe it to the people who come to the festival. So we sat down as a team and thought that a statement is one thing we can do. Strike Germany was also happening at the time, as were other boycott initiatives. We also had selected filmmakers to showcase at our festival, and then they refused because they didn’t want to show in Germany—which we understand, and tried to highlight that in the programme. It’s difficult to realise that we are tied to this country and the money from it, but we also tried to highlight the oppressed voices. We were worried about getting our funding cut and then possible extinction—then there’s no stage where this can happen. 

I hope the statement we wrote was in support and solidarity. At our open speech last year, we also discussed the subject and wore symbols at the festival to show people what we believe in and make people more comfortable. We also organised a community event with Palestinian filmmakers and poetry, based on an existing project. The day before, just outside the cinema Moviemento, there was a protest where police applied a lot of violence. We felt we couldn’t build a safe space in this environment, and this country doesn’t make us feel safe. We can at least let people tell their stories, but even that is apparently seen as violent and illegal. 

XPOSED started yesterday and runs until the 1st of June. What are your plans and highlights for this year’s festival? What should people know? 

The opening will be a big screening, with some filmmakers present, and it’s always nice to see the whole team on stage after the whole exhaustion. We are really proud of the short films program we curate; a lot of work goes into that. Some people’s favourite is a short film program about blooming and flowers. It is beautiful and carries great importance in both obvious and hidden meanings through flowers. 

We have one feature that celebrates its 10th anniversary, Tchindas, about a trans woman and activist from Cape Verde who died last year. There is a film called “If I Die, It Will Be of Joy” about older queers from France—it’s very beautiful, and the director will be there. Many directors decided to attend with their own money or got some funding from embassies and our team’s support. It’s amazing to be able to speak with them and immerse in other realities and be vulnerable with each other. Another feature is a film about trans and indigenous people and identity from the Philippines with four team members coming—I’m really excited about that. But people should just come to everything!

Is there anything else you would like to mention?

In a venue called aquarium, by Südblock, we are offering workshops: one is a Wikipedia marathon, where you can learn how to write articles about queer filmmakers to give them more recognition—might not be the best platform to get your knowledge from, but since many people use it, we might as well queer it. Additionally, there will be an initiative where people can pitch their short film ideas. The winners get some financial aid and mentorship to develop the films. Very often we end up also selecting the short films that come out of it—it’s great, local, queer work. Last year’s winner will be shown at this edition. There are other events, such as a conversation about working with new media forms and having an interdisciplinary approach to film, audio, and visual means. On Sunday, we’ll announce the Lolly Awards winners.