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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
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href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/18/berl-j18.html">wsws.org</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">71st Berlinale opens public festival
with Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian</h1>
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<p>The second stage of the 71st Berlin International Film
Festival, known as the Berlinale, opened with a
screening of Kevin Macdonald’s powerful film <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/09/maur-m09.html">
<em>The Mauritanian</em></a> 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.</p>
<figure>
<p><img
src="https://www.wsws.org/asset/af1f907a-a8bf-4675-a70d-8ef6f49112a9?rendition=image1280"></p>
<figcaption>Berlinale Summer Special 2021 (Photo
credit–Ali Ghandtsch/Berlinale 2021)</figcaption></figure>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<figure>
<p><img
src="https://www.wsws.org/asset/e487efbc-882c-4cb1-8c40-15c82bc758ae?rendition=image1280"></p>
<figcaption>Human rights lawyer Nancy Hollander with
colleague Kitty Austin (Photo credit–Ali
Ghandtschi/Berlinale 2021)</figcaption></figure>
<p>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.</p>
<h4><em>The Mauritanian</em></h4>
<p><em>The Mauritanian</em> is an American-British
co-production currently being shown in German cinemas.
It is based on Salahi’s devastating memoir <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/06/guan-f06.html">
<em>Guantanamo Diary</em></a> (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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<figure>
<p><img
src="https://www.wsws.org/asset/497b925c-514c-4452-bdfa-e71c0e038be8?rendition=image1280"></p>
<figcaption>Jodie Foster as Nancy Hollander in <em>The
Mauritanian</em></figcaption></figure>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>In an <a
href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/09/sala-m09.html">interview</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>At the same time, social conflict and attacks on
democratic rights have intensified across the globe and
also in Germany during the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<figure>
<p><img
src="https://www.wsws.org/asset/7c5ba63e-92dd-4ca0-9fe7-2efad7e803bd?rendition=image1280"></p>
<figcaption>Tahar Rahim as Mohamedou Ould Salahi in <em>The
Mauritanian</em></figcaption></figure>
<p>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.”</p>
<h4>Politically turbulent times for the Berlinale</h4>
<p><em>The Mauritanian</em> 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.</p>
<p>It was all the more striking that Hollander’s
appearance at the opening ceremony was decidedly
undermined and weakened.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Whether Hollander’s rude and censorious treatment was
the result of political interference behind the scenes
is unknown. What is clear, however, is that <em>The
Mauritanian</em>—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.</p>
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