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

SShould film festivals be more than just screenings and a red carpet? Should it make us think about the role that cinema plays in the world? Novelist Arundhati Roy certainly thinks so. She withdrew from appearing at the Berlinale in protest against jury president Wim Wenders’ claim that films should “stay apolitical”. She said Wenders’ position was “unreasonable” and that he “must be heard”. [him] To say that art shouldn’t be political is astonishing.

Wenders has suggested that cinema is a way to build empathy, but it does not directly change politicians’ opinions. But this is simply not true. Some films – documentaries and fiction – not only changed public opinion on social issues, but led directly to legislation. Despite evidence to the contrary, politicians are human too. Can be moved. And sometimes they are taken to work.

Sebastian Lelio’s 2017 drama about a transgender woman struggling to be accepted by her deceased partner’s family was an international hit, winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. But it was in Chile, where it was filmed and filmed, that it had the greatest impact. Lelio was invited to the presidential palace by then-President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, who tweeted: “It was an honor to have the Wonder Woman team here in La Moneda, the people’s home.” The film helped change the political climate in Chile and led to the passage of the Gender Identity Law, which was stuck in Congress for five years.

In 2016, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won her second Academy Award for Girl in the River: The Price of Tolerance, a short documentary about “honour” killings in Pakistan. “This week, the Pakistani Prime Minister said he would change the law on ‘honor’ killings after watching this film. That is the power of the film,” she said in her acceptance speech. The Pakistani government issued a law imposing harsher penalties for these murders and closing legal loopholes that enabled the killers to escape punishment by obtaining forgiveness from family members.

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

“You don’t care. You’re just pretending to care.” Perhaps the most famous BBC television play is Ken Loach’s 1966 television film about a woman’s descent into poverty, which challenged the nation’s views on homelessness. The film had an undeniable impact, although its impact was slower than many thought. There were some immediate results: the film led to the creation of the Homelessness Crisis Foundation just months after it aired. But it was not until 1977 that the Housing (For Homeless Persons) Act was passed, stipulating that homeless families like Cathy’s had the right to be rehoused by the council.

Although people have fought for years for justice in the wake of the Post Office Horizon scandal, it took a four-part drama broadcast on ITV to finally get politicians to act. But they did, by passing the Post Office Compensation (Horizon Scheme) Act 2024 and the Post Office Offenses (Horizon Scheme) Act 2024. Although not a cinematic release, Mr Bates is a clear example of powerful on-screen storytelling that exposes injustice and applies pressure to bring about change.

Silencing

Before creating Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk directed the 2011 drama Silenced, which revolves around the sexual abuse of deaf children at 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 “Dogany Law” (named after the film’s Korean title), which eliminated the statute of limitations for sexual crimes against children under 13 and people with disabilities.

The next day

Nicholas Meyer’s television film about the nuclear attack on the United States was seen by more than 100 million people when it was broadcast in 1983. The president was one of the people who watched it. Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary that night that the film was “very effective and left me very depressed… My reaction was that we had to do everything we could to get a deterrent and to see that there would never be a nuclear war.” This drama helped change Reagan’s mind about US nuclear policy and he adopted a more diplomatic approach that led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.

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 public opinion. It tells the story of a woman named Virginia who is in a psychiatric hospital and has no memory of how she got there. The “snake pit” refers to a large padded room in which patients deemed unable to be helped are left and abandoned. As a result, several US states changed their laws to improve conditions in psychiatric hospitals.