12 h 5 min, 16 août 2021 ans - SCREEN DAILY Wim Wenders defends festivals over Johnny Depp awards

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FROM SCREEN DAILY:

Wim Wenders defends festivals over Johnny Depp awards: “Who am I to judge how he leads his life?”

BY BEN DALTON

German director Wim Wenders has spoken in defence of Karlovy Vary and San Sebastian film festivals, which have attracted criticism for choosing to give honorary awards to Johnny Depp.

Talking to Screen at the 27th Sarajevo Film Festival, where he received an honorary award of his own last week, Wenders said: “If somebody is condemned because of some accusations, it’s very hard sometimes to prove the opposite.

“Sometimes it is proven without a shadow of a doubt, like the case of Mr. Weinstein in my opinion.

“In other cases, if there’s a shadow of a doubt, I think people are free to give an award for what [Depp] is doing as a film artist. Johnny has certainly made a number of great movies and supported some great projects.

“Who am I to judge how he leads his life?” continued Wenders, “unless somebody tells me in a way that convinces me that he’s done something that an artist of his status should not do.”

Wenders suggested that contemporary morals would have restricted great artists of the past. “By today’s standards, Picasso should be taken out of all museums,” he said. “So how do you deal with that? Picasso wasn’t exactly kind with some of his women.”

The Depp situation is indicative of a broader conversation regarding “the notion of truth and fake news”, which Wenders called “a cultural issue of our times.”

“We’re just in such an upheaval today,” he said. “Nobody really knows the norms, the internet and social media falsify so many things. So unless we as a society agree on certain terms, I refuse to judge anybody.”

Karlovy Vary and San Sebastian have received criticism in the past week for the choice to honour Depp, including from domestic abuse charities in the UK. San Sebastian director Jose Luis Rebordinos responded on Friday, saying that the festival “will always defend…the presumption of innocence and that of the right to reintegration.”

In 2020, Depp lost his libel case against UK tabloid The Sun after it described him as a “wife-beater” in a 2018 article.

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