[D66] [JD: 116] 71st Berlinale opens public festival with Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian | WSWS

[R.O.]

wsws.org <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/18/berl-j18.html>


  71st Berlinale opens public festival with Kevin Macdonald’s The
  Mauritanian

7-9 minutes
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The second stage of the 71st Berlin International Film Festival, known
as the Berlinale, opened with a screening of Kevin Macdonald’s powerful
film /The Mauritanian/
<https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/09/maur-m09.html> about the
case of Mohamedou Ould Salahi. Salahi, guilty of no offence, was
imprisoned and subjected to severe torture by American authorities for
over 14 years in the notorious Guantanamo detention camp.

Berlinale Summer Special 2021 (Photo credit–Ali Ghandtsch/Berlinale 2021)

Human rights lawyer Nancy Hollander, who helped secure Salahi’s release,
attended the Berlinale opening ceremony in person and introduced the
film. Video greetings were also sent by actors Jodie Foster, Hollander
in the film, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays a military prosecutor,
along with Macdonald. Salahi himself was unable to attend. Immigration
authorities denied his application for an entry visa to enable him to
reunite with his family in Berlin.

In a moving speech, Hollander described Salahi’s ordeal, which began
under George W. Bush and continued under the Obama administration. She
urged the German authorities to allow him to enter Germany and not to
continue his previous “inhuman treatment.”

Human rights lawyer Nancy Hollander with colleague Kitty Austin (Photo
credit–Ali Ghandtschi/Berlinale 2021)

The world’s largest public festival, the Berlinale, is taking place in
two stages this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of
March, the majority of the festival films were presented online for
movie industry and select media representatives, and the principal
prizes, the Golden and Silver Bears, were awarded. In the second stage
of the festival, held from June 9 to 20, the public has been able to see
a large portion of the festival’s more than 160 films in the city’s
parks and squares, in accordance with health regulations. An additional
audience award has been created for the films shown in the competition
section.


        /The Mauritanian/

/The Mauritanian/ is an American-British co-production currently being
shown in German cinemas. It is based on Salahi’s devastating memoir
/Guantanamo Diary/
<https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/06/guan-f06.html> (2015).
Salahi was arrested in Mauritania following the September 11, 2001
attacks, transported to the Guantanamo detention camp in Cuba in 2002
and held there until 2016 without ever being formally charged.

As the WSWS commented in its March 8 review, Macdonald’s film exposes
the reality of America’s “war on terror,” attacks on democratic rights
and the illegal practices, including torture and murder, carried out
since 9/11 by successive US governments, Republican and Democrat alike,
in collaboration with the CIA and the US military.

Jodie Foster as Nancy Hollander in /The Mauritanian/

Salahi was born in 1970 in the former French colony of Mauritania in
Northwest Africa and received a scholarship to study engineering in
Duisburg, Germany in 1988. In 1991, he stayed briefly in Afghanistan and
expressed sympathy for Al Qaeda, which at that time still enjoyed
American support. He returned to Germany after the fall of the Afghan
central government in 1992 and since then has had nothing more to do
with Al Qaeda. Somewhat later, he lived for a time in Canada working as
an electrical engineer.

The film begins at the point when Mohamedou is asked to report for
questioning at a police station in Mauritania two months after the
events of September 11. This marked the start of his ordeal. Falsely
accused of being in contact with Osama bin Laden, he was imprisoned in
Jordan and then in Afghanistan, and finally shipped to Guantanamo in
chains with a bag over his head.

As Salahi writes in his published diary, the US government began “a
secret operation aimed at kidnapping, detaining, torturing or killing
terror suspects—an operation without any legal basis. I was the victim
of such an operation, although I had done nothing of the sort and had
never been involved in such crimes.”

In an interview
<https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/09/sala-m09.html> with the
WSWS, Salahi described the torture methods he was subjected to,
including sleep deprivation for 70 days, non-stop interrogation in
shifts, stress positions, waterboarding, sexual assault and beatings in
which his ribs were broken. The film accurately portrays these
experiences, he told the WSWS.

The fact that the Guantanamo film was shown at the beginning of the
public portion of the Berlinale is significant. The notion of America as
a haven of democracy and freedom, prevalent after the end of the Nazi
dictatorship, faded long ago. Since the 1990s, the world’s population
has experienced one criminal war after the next led by the US—up to and
including the recent murderous campaign waged by Israel in the Gaza
Strip, a campaign largely directed and financed by the American
government. The far-right coup attempt in Washington on January 6 also
demonstrated in shocking fashion the extent to which the role of the US
has changed.

At the same time, social conflict and attacks on democratic rights have
intensified across the globe and also in Germany during the coronavirus
pandemic.

This is underlined by the fact that Salahi has been trying in vain to
join his family in Germany since 2019. In support of his effort, the
human rights lawyers of the European Center for Constitutional and Human
Rights (ECCHR) filed a lawsuit against the German federal government at
the end of April.

Tahar Rahim as Mohamedou Ould Salahi in /The Mauritanian/

At the conclusion of her speech, Hollander declared that the actions of
the German authorities, the delay in giving him his visa, were “really a
continuation of the inhuman treatment” that Salahi has suffered for over
20 years. And she stressed: “So I ask, I demand that Germany do the
right thing, stand for human rights, not stand against the rule of law,
but stand for the rule of law, stand for human rights and grant him his
family reunification visa.”


        Politically turbulent times for the Berlinale

/The Mauritanian/ failed to gather a single nomination during the recent
Academy Awards process in the US. The decision to show the film at the
Berlinale had political significance. On the one hand, it represented an
accommodation to a growing anti-capitalist, anti-militarist sentiment in
the population; on the other, it was an expression of increasing
trans-Atlantic tensions and an attempt to take a more independent
position vis-à-vis Hollywood.

It was all the more striking that Hollander’s appearance at the opening
ceremony was decidedly undermined and weakened.

To the surprise of those participating in the official ceremony at
Berlin’s Museum Island, and contrary to the event’s protocol, Hollander
was only able to take the stage after a break and following the video
greetings, i.e., shortly before the film began. Many journalists had
already left the ceremony due to the late hour, and the ZDF television
crew failed to record her remarks as part of the channel’s live coverage
of the event. There also was no prior press conference with Hollander.

This meant that the lawyer’s important remarks were not covered by the
media. The film’s representatives, who had gone to considerable lengths
to ensure the personal presence of the famed human rights lawyer,
expressed their disappointment to the WSWS.

Whether Hollander’s rude and censorious treatment was the result of
political interference behind the scenes is unknown. What is clear,
however, is that /The Mauritanian/—an indictment of American imperialist
crimes over the last quarter century—is also disturbing to the German
ruling elite, which is currently flexing its own military and
neo-colonial muscles. The assault on democratic rights is taking an
increasingly aggressive form in Germany.

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