Berlinale 2026

And why Wim Wenders is the whitest Man alive

I have returned from Central Africa to Berlin — a journey not only across continents but across climates, with a temperature drop of roughly forty degrees and, at moments, what felt like a comparable drop in psychic humidity.

I had intended to report more from the rainforest: on Iboga and its stern metaphysics, on the Pygmy cosmology of listening, on the Chinese logging camp humming away at the edge of primeval time. But Berlin has a way of reclaiming one’s attention with bureaucratic efficiency. I plunged straight back into Stoned Sapiens — and so, if you were hoping for dispatches on Iboga and the evolution of humankind, you will have to wait until next year, when the book appears. Evolution, after all, takes time. Even in publishing.

So: winter in Berlin. What has happened in the capital of Germany over the past two weeks?

The Berlin International Film Festival Berlinale unfolded — and almost immediately entangled itself in a controversy befitting its reputation as Europe’s most self-consciously political festival. On the opening day, during the major press conference, jury president Wim Wenders was confronted by an influencer with a question about Gaza: would the jury take a stance?

Wenders’ response made headlines not for what it said, but for what it declined to say.