Author-activist Arundhati Roy has cancelled her participation in this year’s Berlin Film Festival over a comment from jury president Wim Wenders about the need for the festival to “stay out of politics”, she said on Friday.

A 4K restored version of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, a 1989 film about student angst and ambition, which Roy wrote 38 years back, was previously selected to be screened at the film festival.

As per media reports, the Booker Prize-winning author sent her statement to AFP, saying that she was “shocked and disgusted” by the German filmmaker’s response to a question on the war-ravaged condition of Gaza during a press conference the day before.

Citing the “unconscionable statements” on part of the jury members when asked for a comment on the Gaza situation, Roy reportedly said that she will no longer be attending.

While responding to questions regarding the current state of the world at the press conference, Wim Wenders said, “We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics.”

As per a report by Variety, Wenders said, “But we are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

In a statement to The Wire, Roy said, “It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time — when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”

The TV movie In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, written by Roy and directed by Pradip Krishen, was among 10 titles selected for the festival’s prestigious classics line-up. Krishen will attend the festival with Roy.

Roy penned the screenplay and also appeared in a major role in the film, which was originally made for Indian public broadcaster Doordarshan.

Set in an architecture school in Delhi in the mid-1970s, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones is a campus comedy that follows Anand Grover, nicknamed Annie by his friends, a misguided visionary who lands in trouble after mocking the college principal, Y D Billimoria, known as Yamdoot.

The film featured a young Shah Rukh Khan and Manoj Bajpayee in small but significant roles, alongside lead performances by Arjun Raina, Roshan Seth and Roy herself. Khan and Bajpayee were both part of the Delhi theatre circuit at the time.