The 74th Berlin International Film Festival, commonly known as the Berlinale, concluded on Sunday not with a whimper, but with a social media hack, a series of strongly worded press releases, and an announcement from Germany’s federal cultural minister that she claps only for Israeli artists.

On the final day of the Berlinale, the Instagram account for its Panorama section released a three-slide infographic statement. Panorama is the festival’s largest section, described on the Berlinale website as “explicitly queer, explicitly feminist, explicitly political — and at the same time seeks to think beyond these categories — always looking for what is new, daring, unconventional and wild in today’s cinema.” The second of the graphic’s slides stated:

In response to the pro-Palestine actions that targeted Berlinale 2024, and in light of the extreme rise of the far-right in Germany, we acknowledge that our silence makes us complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. After long internal discussions, we have decided to finally shed the idea that “German guilt” absolves us of our country’s history, or our current crimes as a nation. We are raising our voice to join the millions around the world who demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and we urge other cultural institutions in Germany to do the same.