Ethan Hawke Told Berlin Not to Ask Drunk Artists

Ethan Hawke told Berlin on February 17, 2026, not to take political advice from jet-lagged, drunk artists. He was at the 76th Berlinale to present Padraic McKinley’s The Weight, and a German reporter had just asked whether famous artists should fight fascism.

The room laughed. Then Hawke kept talking, backed anything that fights fascism, and still would not answer a follow-up about Gaza. The joke was supposed to cool the room. It became the line that left it.

A Joke About Drunk Artists Was the Week’s Quote

Tilo Jung, host of the German interview series Jung & Naiv, put the first political question to him in open session. Hawke was sitting with McKinley and co-stars Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen and Sam Hazeldine. Russell Crowe, who plays the warden in the film, was not in the room.

Jung asked what famous artists should do while fascism rose in Europe and the United States, and he framed fascism as the enemy of artistic freedom. Hawke took a beat, then aimed the answer at the whole table, not at the far right.

The last place you probably want to look for advice in your spiritual counsel is a bunch of jet-lagged, drunk artists talking about their film.

Ethan Hawke, actor, Berlinale press conference for The Weight

Laughter and applause followed, which is what a line like that is built to get. He did not stop there. He said he loves movies, compared cinema to the dreams that heal people overnight, and called the festival collectively responsible for an “international dream life.” He asked what that dream was, what they were talking about, and what they were thinking about.

Then he reached for the film he had come to sell. At its core, he said, The Weight is about a group of people who do not think they have anything in common, who band together to fight institutional greed and malevolence, and who find they have more in common than they knew. “And that’s worth fighting for,” he said. He closed the first answer with the sentence the clips kept: “Anything that fights fascism, I’m all for it.”

Jung later posted that Hawke had not seemed to want to engage at first, then said he was all for a fight against fascism. The full session is on video.

Hawke also joked about the flashy suit he wore to the table, remembering his first Berlinale trip in the early 1990s and a suit bought for $4 in a thrift store. “And as your face cracks and decomposes, you start to spend more money on clothes,” he said. Berlin has been a festival home for him since the Before films. In 2025 he brought Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon in competition and picked up best actor nominations at the Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and SAG Awards. The political questions were not a surprise. They were the weather.

Eighty-One Alumni Called the Festival Silent

The 76th Berlinale ran from February 12 to 22, 2026, and the political weather had already broken before Hawke sat down. At the opening press conference on February 12, jury president Wim Wenders was asked about Gaza and about German government support for Israel, including weapons sales, given that the state funds the festival. Wenders said artists “should stay out of politics,” and that filmmaking was “the opposite of politics.” He also called cinema “the counterweight of politics.”

Indian author Arundhati Roy, booked to attend a restoration of a film she wrote, pulled out on February 13. She called Wenders’s remarks “unconscionable” and “jaw-dropping.” Golden Bear honoree Michelle Yeoh and actor Neil Patrick Harris, at the festival with Sunny Dancer, also declined political questions, Harris saying he was interested in doing things that were “apolitical,” and both caught online anger for it.

Festival director Tricia Tuttle sent a long note late on February 14. She said free speech was happening at the Berlinale, then described a trap: filmmakers were criticised if they did not answer, criticised if they answered and the answer was disliked, and criticised if they could not compress a complex thought into a sound bite when they thought they were talking about a film. She said there were 278 films in the programme, including work about genocide, sexual violence in war, corruption, colonial power and abusive states. Artists, she wrote, should not be expected to speak on every political issue unless they want to, or to comment on festival practices they do not control.

On the morning of February 17, the same day as Hawke’s press conference, 81 current and former Berlinale participants published an open letter. The names included Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Adam McKay, Mike Leigh, Nan Goldin, Tatiana Maslany, Brian Cox, Fernando Meirelles, Adèle Haenel, Lukas Dhont, Hany Abu-Assad and Paul Laverty. They said they were dismayed at the festival’s “silence” on Gaza and at what they called the censoring of artists who oppose Israel’s war.

WHAT THE FEBRUARY LETTER DEMANDED

• The Wenders line: The signers said they fervently disagree that filmmaking is the opposite of politics, and that the two cannot be separated.
• A public statement: They asked the Berlinale to affirm a Palestinian right to life, dignity and freedom, and to state opposition to what they called Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
• Last year’s stage: They wrote that filmmakers who spoke for Palestinian life from the 2025 stage were reprimanded, and that one was reported to have been investigated by police.
• A double standard: They said the festival had spoken about atrocities in Iran and Ukraine and should do the same for Palestinians, and they cited UN special rapporteur Irene Khan on German limits on Palestinian-rights speech.

The letter also said more than 5,000 film workers had already refused to work with Israeli companies and institutions they called complicit. Tuttle later told interviewers the festival recognised anger about suffering in Gaza and rejected what she called misinformation and anonymous claims in the letter. Hawke, sitting down that afternoon, was asked to pick a side in a fight that had already been framed for him.

Why Hawke Would Not Touch the Gaza Letter

A reporter came back later in the same conference, named Swinton, McKay and Bardem, and asked how Hawke felt about Palestinian voices being criticised or silenced. Hawke said he did not know enough about the names to speak, and that he had no context for the question. Then he talked about the last time he had spoken publicly “about any of this.”

He said he had been shocked by the animosity, and by people saying actors should not talk about politics. He called that the inverse of what he believes. “We’re all citizens of the world and all of us matter, all of us have a voice and everybody’s welcome to disagree,” he said. “That’s part of the benefit of living in a free society.”

He has already made a public pullback from political preaching, and the Berlin answer sounded like that caution under bright lights. Celebrities get microphones thrown in their faces, he said, “but it’s not because we’re telling people what to do.” They are sharing art. “We’re not some of the greatest minds in the world that try to make the planet live in peace.”

He steered from the letter to children. The job of grown-ups, he said, is to take care of the young people in their lives and to make sure they have a good world to be born into. Then he turned back to the reporter. “I feel like there’s a slight agenda to your question that’s different from my agenda,” he said. “But I respect you and I respect the question.”

That last sentence is the one that would not sit still. It granted the reporter a right to ask and denied that the ask was Hawke’s work. It also handed both sides a clip. One side heard a citizen defending speech. The other heard a star refusing to say Gaza.

The Weight Follows Convicts Through Oregon Backcountry

The movie he was there to talk about is a 1933 Oregon survival drama, McKinley’s feature debut, shot in and around Viechtach, Germany, in July 2025. Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a widower pulled from his daughter and sent to a brutal labor camp. Crowe is Warden Clancy, who offers early release if Murphy smuggles gold through deadly wilderness. Jones plays Anna, an Indigenous runaway and the only woman on the trek. Avi Nash, Austin Amelio and the younger convicts round out a crew that turns on itself.

Hawke’s own producing partner, Ryan Hawke, is among the producers, with Simon Fields, Nathan Fields, Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo. The film had its world premiere at Sundance on January 26, 2026. Berlin gave it a European premiere as a Special Gala on February 17, outside competition. Vertical bought North American rights in March and set a U.S. theatrical date of September 18, 2026.

THE WEIGHT ON THE CALENDAR

Festival reviews have been kind to Hawke’s physical work as a father bargaining with a bad system, which is close to the speech he gave about greed and malevolence. Crowe plays the man who owns that system. The plot is a gold run. The press conference tried to make it a referendum.

The Second Clip Turned the Laugh Into a Charge

Two versions of the hour left the room. One was the drunk-artists line, then the fascism closer, packaged as a star who could joke and still take a side. The other was the Gaza follow-up, packaged as a star who named an agenda and walked around the word.

Jung posted both. The second clip is the one that drew the harder argument. Replies treated the children line as a way to skip a question about killed children, and treated Hawke’s calm as self-regard. He was called a genocide denier and a Zionist on the same feeds that had laughed at the joke an hour earlier. A reporter who pressed him on the letter later called the answer patronizing and said artists had a moral duty to speak.

The split is not mysterious. “Anything that fights fascism” is a wide door. A letter that uses the word genocide, names Israel, and asks a guest to endorse 81 peers is a narrow one. Hawke opened the first door and would not walk through the second. The children sentence was meant as a value. It was heard as a substitute.

That is the bind Tuttle had described two days earlier, in writing, before Hawke ever sat down. Answer, and the answer is too small. Decline, and the decline is the story. Joke, and the joke becomes the statement. Hawke tried all three in one conference, which is why the drunk-artists line traveled farther than any scene from The Weight that week.

Berlin’s Culture Minister Tried to Oust the Festival Head

The press-conference fight did not stay in the press conference. On February 21, İlker Çatak’s Yellow Letters won the Golden Bear. Accepting another prize, filmmaker Alkhatib called the German government “partners in the genocide in Gaza,” and environment minister Carsten Schneider walked out. Tuttle had already called the ten days “stormy seas.” After the gala, German culture minister Wolfram Weimer moved to reopen her job.

FROM THE OPENING PRESS CONFERENCE TO MARCH 4

1. February 12, 2026: Wenders tells the opening press conference that artists should stay out of politics and that film is the opposite of politics.
2. February 13, 2026: Arundhati Roy withdraws from the festival over those remarks.
3. February 14, 2026: Tuttle publishes her note saying artists should not be expected to speak on every political issue.
4. February 17, 2026: Eighty-one alumni publish the Gaza letter, and Hawke gives the drunk-artists answer the same afternoon.
5. February 21, 2026: Yellow Letters wins the Golden Bear, and a prize speech on Gaza prompts a minister to walk out.
6. March 4, 2026: After two special board meetings, Weimer tells the Bundestag culture committee that Tuttle stays, with a new code of conduct and an advisory forum.

Tuttle, in the post since 2024 with a contract through 2029, had told Weimer she could barely run the festival in that atmosphere and discussed a mutual exit. Cannes director Thierry Frémaux and other festival heads backed her remaining. Weimer had wanted her gone and could not get there. He announced that Tuttle will remain festival director, and that federal culture events would get a code of conduct plus a “consultative forum.”

Hawke did not cause that fight. He walked into it, told the room not to ask drunk artists for counsel, then gave them a fascism line and a Gaza refusal anyway. The Weight opens in U.S. theaters on September 18, 2026, with a 94 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from the festival run. The clips will open with it.