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German minister says she clapped Israeli film-maker, not his Palestinian colleague, at Berlinale

Call for Green politician to resign amid row over politically charged closing ceremony at film festival

Germany’s minister of state for culture has insisted she was only clapping the Israeli but not the Palestinian half of a filmmaking duo that won one of the major awards at the politically charged closing ceremony for the Berlin film festival. Footage of the awards ceremony, however, put further pressure on the minister of state: in a panoramic shot of the auditorium at the end of Adra and Abraham’s acceptance speech, Roth and Wegner are clearly visible clapping their hands. In a separate development, the Berlin film festival’s directors announced on Monday that it had filed criminal charges after the hacking of its Panorama section’s Instagram account, which was used to post messages in support of Palestine.

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