Arundhati Roy is right, not Wim Wenders – here are eight films that have changed politics | Film

SShould film festivals be more than just screenings and red carpets? Should they encourage us to think about the role that cinema plays in the world? Novelist Arundhati Roy certainly thinks so. She withdrew from the Berlin festival jury in protest against jury president Wim Wenders’ assertion that films should “stay out of politics”; she declared that Wenders’ position was “unconscionable” and that “to hear [him] to say that art should not be political is breathtaking.

Wenders had suggested that cinema is a way to develop empathy, but not to directly change the minds of politicians. But that’s simply not true. Certain films – both documentary and narrative – have not only changed public opinion on social issues, but also led directly to the passage of laws. Despite evidence to the contrary, politicians are people too. They can be moved. And sometimes, they are even pushed into action.

Sebastián Lelio’s 2017 drama about a transgender woman struggling to be accepted by her deceased partner’s family enjoyed huge international success, winning the Academy Award for best foreign language film. But it was in Chile, where the film was set and filmed, that it had the greatest impact. Lelio was invited to the presidential palace by Michelle Bachelet, then president of Chile, who tweeted: “It was an honor to have the A Fantastic Woman team here at La Moneda, the people’s house. » The film helped change the political climate in Chile and led to the passage of the Gender Identity Law, which had been blocked in Congress for five years.

In 2016, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won her second Oscar for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, a short documentary about “honor” killings in Pakistan. In her acceptance speech, she said: “This week, the Prime Minister of Pakistan said he would change the law on honor killings after watching this film. That is the power of cinema.” The Pakistani government passed a law providing stricter punishment for such killings and closing legal loopholes that allowed killers to escape their punishment by obtaining forgiveness from their family members.

Filmmakers Shara Amin and Nabaz Ahmed spent 10 years on the roads of Kurdistan speaking to women and men about the impact of female genital mutilation. The resulting documentary had a profound impact on lawmakers, and in 2011, Kurdistan’s parliament passed a bill banning the practice. “Showing the film in Parliament was a big step forward for us,” Ahmed told the Guardian.

“You don’t care. You only pretend to care.” Perhaps the BBC’s most famous television play, Ken Loach’s 1966 TV film about a woman’s descent into poverty challenged national views on homelessness. The film had an undeniable impact, although its influence was slower than many think. The results were immediate: the film gave birth to the Crisis association, just a few months after its broadcast. But it wasn’t until 1977 that the Housing (Homeless People) Act was passed, stipulating that homeless families like Cathy’s had the right to be rehoused by the municipality.

Although people campaigned for years for justice following the Post Office Horizon scandal, it took the broadcast of a four-part soap opera on ITV for politicians to finally act. But they took action by passing the Postal Compensation (Horizon System) Act, 2024 and the Postal Offenses (Horizon System) Act, 2024. Although not a cinematic release, Mr. Bates is a clear example of powerful on-screen storytelling revealing injustice and pushing for change.

Silent

Before creating Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk directed the 2011 drama Silenced, about the sexual abuse of deaf children at the Gwangju Inhwa school in South Korea. The film depicts not only the crimes but also the inadequate justice that followed, sparking public outrage. The Korean National Assembly passed the “Dogani Law” (Korean name for the film’s title), which removes the statute of limitations for sex crimes against children under 13 and people with disabilities.

The day after

Nicholas Meyer’s television movie about a nuclear attack on the United States was watched by more than 100 million people when it aired in 1983. One of the viewers was the president. Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary that evening that the film was “very effective and left me very depressed… My own reaction was that we must do everything we can to act as a deterrent and ensure that there is never a nuclear war.” » This drama helped change Reagan’s mind on US nuclear policy and he adopted a more diplomatic approach that led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.

The snake pit

Anatole Litvak co-directed the Why We Fight series of propaganda films with Frank Capra, but his 1948 psychological drama The Snake Pit did as much as his documentaries to change opinions. It tells the story of a woman named Virginia in a mental hospital who doesn’t remember how she got there. The “snake pit” refers to a large padded room where patients deemed beyond repair are left and abandoned. As a result, several US states have changed their laws to improve conditions in psychiatric hospitals.