Arundhati Roy exits film festival over Wenders' comment

Indian writer Arundhati Roy has cancelled her planned attendance at the Berlin International Film Festival after jury president and acclaimed director Wim Wenders suggested filmmakers should "stay out of politics".

"With deep regret, I must say that I will not be attending the Berlinale," Roy wrote in a statement issued by her publisher, citing "the unconscionable statements made by members of the jury of the Berlin film festival when they were asked to comment about the genocide in Gaza".

Jury members were asked in an opening day press conference on Thursday, local time, to comment on the festival's stance on the Gaza war.

A journalist, accusing the Berlin film festival of showing solidarity with Ukrainians and Iranians but not with Palestinians, asked jury members whether they "support this selective treatment of human rights".

Jury member Ewa Puszczynska said asking such a question was "unfair", and jury president Wenders responded: "We cannot really enter the field of politics."

"We have to stay out of politics, because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political we enter the field of politics, but we are the counterweight to politics," he added.

"We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians."

Roy, whose 1997 novel The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize, said she had been shocked to hear the jury's comments.

"To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping," she said.

"It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time - when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it."

Roy had been due to attend a Berlin film festival screening of her 1989 film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.