Millennium Docs Against Gravity Artistic Director Rebuts Wim Wenders

The artistic director of Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland is offering a rebuttal to Wim Wenders after the German director said filmmakers should “stay out of politics.”

“I’m not going to take issue with the person that said it, but with the sentiment,” Karol Piekarczyk said on the opening night of the international documentary festival in Warsaw, referring to remarks Wenders made as president of the Berlinale jury in February. “I don’t know since when the basic human rights have become political. We didn’t make them political.”

Piekarczyk added, “I think there is a deep misunderstanding about how filmmakers work, especially documentary filmmakers. It’s not like you have a list of topics and just choose, maybe I’ll do this or maybe I’ll do that. It doesn’t work like that. Alisa [Kovalenko, director of Traces] didn’t make her film because she had this list and she just figured out she’s going to make a film. She made it because it’s a personal story, but it’s a story that people have to hear. It’s a story about how sexual violence is treated like a weapon.”

In conversation with Deadline, the artistic director expanded on his remarks.

“Saying that films shouldn’t be political is, I don’t know,” he paused, before adding, “If you think that not talking about genocide, not talking about racism, not talking about injustices will make them just simply go away, well, this is very, very naive. We have to talk about these things. Basic human rights were set up to be apolitical. That was the idea — not to be political and that never mind what side you’re on, right, left, center, whatever, these are fundamental human rights. But we live in a world where they have been politicized despite this great honest idea that they shouldn’t be. So, if this is political, then yeah, we are political.”

Piekarczyk noted that documentary filmmakers have faced backlash for taking on political subject matter.

“It happened at different festivals where filmmakers were screening films on difficult topics, on genocide and Palestine. And then suddenly some festivals were distancing themselves from these filmmakers whose work they are showing,” he said. “For me, this is absolutely insane.”

By contrast, he said of MDAG, “If we choose films, we will always stand behind the filmmakers because this is a part of our identity and this is also what the audiences expect from us, especially in this troubled world where you need to stake stances and you need to feel this community, which also helps with not feeling helpless, not feeling alone and feeling that we can sort of start building some new things from the beginning.”

Wenders’ canon, including Wings of Desire, Perfect Days, Buena Vista Social Club, and Pope Francis: A Man of His Word, spans fiction and nonfiction. He made his comments about filmmakers staying out of politics at the jury press conference opening the Berlin Film Festival, which in the ensuing days, predictably, became a question asked of every prominent attendee.

At the awards ceremony closing the Berlinale, some winners used their acceptance speeches to support Palestinians and criticize Israel over its war in Gaza. Those comments, viewed dimly by some German politicians, prompted the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), which bankrolls and oversees the Berlinale, to call an impromptu meeting to discuss the future of the Berlinale and Tricia Tuttle’s leadership as festival director. She appears to have weathered that storm.

The potential for governments to intervene in film festivals comes up regularly in Europe, where taxpayer money is used to fund those events to greater or lesser degrees depending on the country. At MDAG, the main sponsor is Millennium Bank, not a government entity, largely taking government intervention out of the equation.

“I have to say that we’ve been extremely lucky,” Piekarczyk commented. “If I was supposed to program a festival in such a space like Berlinale and have all this pressure… I’m not sure if I would be able to do it. This is a comfortable situation [at MDAG]. We have the main sponsor of the festival, which has been with us for years and they have despite us also showing films that are critical of capitalism and saying that it should be rethought, rebuilt, or we should imagine a different world. They have never said anything about our programming, and they are very in sync [with us]. They are also fans of the festival, which is amazing.”

Piekarczyk added, “We did have a period, quite a long period, where we had the right-wing government in Poland, but the only sort of straightforward pressure that we received was funding, or rather a lack of funding. But there became a point where institutions like the Polish Film Institute — because we grew so big and also internationally grew so big — they couldn’t ignore us anymore… They didn’t give us a lot of money, but they started giving us money because they just looked a bit stupid when they were traveling the world and people were saying, ‘Oh, [you] have such an amazing festival’ and stuff like that.”

MDAG is held simultaneously in seven Polish cities: Wroclaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Poznań, Bydgoszcz, Łódź, and Warsaw. Audiences are demonstrating their enthusiasm for it in growing numbers.

“So many people are coming, 180,000 [admissions] last year,” Piekarczyk noted. “The audience is an amazing sponsor and support. So, we are in that regard very, very, very lucky.”

MDAG continues in person until May 18, with an online component running from May 19 to June 1.