Meryl Streep took to the Huffington Post today to clarify a comment she made earlier this month at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Back on Feb. 11, an Egyptian journalist asked Streep if she understood films made in the Arab world and North Africa, since many from those regions were playing at the festival. As the president of the festival jury, she would be required to judge them.
“There is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture, and after all, we’re all from Africa originally,” Streep was quoted as saying, after admitting that she really didn’t know too much about the Middle East.. “You know, we’re all…Berliners. We’re all Africans, really.”
In an Op-Ed for the Huffington Post, Streep noted the diversity of the films that won prizes at Berlin. Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire At Sea, which centers on African immigrants making their way to Europe, won the top prize. Tunisian filmmaker Mohamed Ben Attia won the Silver Bear for Best First Film for Hedi.
“I was not minimizing difference, but emphasizing the invisible connection empathy enables, a thing so central to the fact of being human, and what art can do: convey another person's experience,” Streep wrote about her comments. “To be in Berlin is to see proof that walls don't work.”
She said that she wished the media paid as much attention to the works of the filmmakers as they did to her “misconstrued remarks.”
“Their work is newsworthy, and deserves celebration. It reflects a diversity of place, race, viewpoint and humanity that should not be invisible in America,” Streep wrote about the filmmakers.