The author Arundhati Roy has withdrawn from the Berlinale after the film festival’s chief juror said film-makers must stay out of politics.

The festival got off to a shaky start on Thursday after the competition jury, led by the German film-maker Wim Wenders, fielded questions about the conflict in Gaza. Asked if films can affect political change, Wenders said that “movies can change the world” but “not in a political way”.

He added that film-makers “have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. 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 on Friday announcing her withdrawal, Roy, who had been planning to attend a screening of her recently restored 1989 film In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones, called the comments “unconscionable” and feared they had reached “millions of people across the world”.

The Booker prize-winning Indian author said: “To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping. 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 film-makers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.”

She added: “Although I have been profoundly disturbed by the positions taken by the German government and various German cultural institutions on Palestine, I have always received political solidarity when I have spoken to German audiences about my views on the genocide in Gaza.”

Wenders is the serving president of this year’s Berlinale jury, which includes the American director-producer Reinaldo Marcus Green, the Japanese film-maker Hikari, the Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham, the South Korean actor Bae Doona, the Indian director-producer Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, and Ewa Puszczyńska – who produced Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, about the idyllic home life of an Auschwitz commandant and his family.

The jury was questioned about the support the German government, which funds much of the festival, has shown for Israel. Puszczyńska called the question “complicated” and “a bit unfair”.

“Of course, we are trying to talk to people – every single viewer – to make them think, but we cannot be responsible for what their decision would be to support Israel or the decision to support Palestine,” she said. “There are many other wars where genocide is committed and we do not talk about that.”

Roy, who was this week longlisted for the Women’s prize for non-fiction for her first memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, emphasised her belief that “what has happened in Gaza, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel”.

She added: “It is supported and funded by the governments of the United States and Germany, as well as several other countries in Europe, which makes them complicit in the crime. If the greatest film-makers and artists of our time cannot stand up and say so, they should know that history will judge them. I am shocked and disgusted.”

Reflecting on her film being slated for inclusion in the festival’s Classics section, the author said there had been “something sweet and wonderful” about In Which Annie Gives It Those One, describing it as “a whimsical film that I wrote 38 years ago”.

A writer has left the Society of Authors (SoA) in protest after the UK’s largest writers’ body made a statement on a recent Israeli police raid on a Palestinian-owned bookstore without mentioning Israel, Palestine or the names of the booksellers who were arrested.

Matthew Teller, the author of books including Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, said the SoA’s statement “added insult to the injury” and was a “betrayal”, leading to him cancelling his membership on Tuesday.

The SoA’s statement was made in response to raids on two branches of the Educational Bookshop, the leading Palestinian-owned bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem, on 9 February. Mahmoud Muna – who co-edited the book Daybreak in Gaza with Teller – and his nephew, Ahmed Muna, were arrested and held in detention before being released under a five-day house arrest.

“We are concerned by recent press reports on the police raid of an educational bookshop in a country which is governed by a parliamentary democracy”, read the SoA’s statement, published on 13 February.

Teller said he would have hoped the SoA “would have taken this opportunity to illuminate the evils of state censorship and defend those who seek to practise freedom. Instead, it obscured understanding of the issues with platitudes and irrelevant assertions. It was an abject failure.

“I wholeheartedly support writers who are able to remain engaged with the SoA, and I recognise the value in urgent ongoing efforts to force change, but I, regretfully, can no longer tolerate such equivocation from a trade union that purports to represent me,” Teller said.

A representative from the SoA said the organisation “is saddened when any of our members decide to leave us”, but that “on this occasion, the SoA did not have enough information to comment on the situation concerning the bookshop in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, we considered that recent press reports provided an opportunity to the SoA to remind our members of its position on book bans.”

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

More than 250 books were confiscated by police during the raid, most of which have since been returned. “They used Google Translate on the books, and anything they didn’t like, they took,” said Murad Muna, Mahmoud’s brother. “They took every book with a Palestinian flag on it.” Mahmoud’s 11-year-old daughter was helping in the shop at the time, and saw her father being taken away.

Mahmoud and Ahmed were initially charged with “inciting and supporting terrorism”; a police statement said that “detectives encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes, including a children’s colouring book titled From the River to the Sea”. However, the charge was changed to “disturbing public order”, according to the booksellers’ lawyer.

The family-run Educational Bookshop opened in 1984 and has since become a hub of cultural life in Jerusalem, well-known among academics, journalists and tourists. After the raid, dozens of protesters gathered outside court, and at least nine diplomats from the UK and other European countries attended the hearing on 10 February.

More than £30,000 has since been raised via a GoFundMe campaign in support of the Educational Bookshop organised by the London-based Saqi Books, which publishes Daybreak in Gaza. Funds will go towards replacing books that were seized, fixing damages and paying booksellers until Mahmoud and Ahmed are allowed to return to work, as one of the terms of their 11 February release was that they must not return to bookselling for a minimum of 20 days.

Alongside fellow independent publisher Pluto Press, Saqi Books is also launching #BooksellingIsNotACrime Day on Saturday, with booksellers invited to put on events, donate a percentage of their profits to the fundraiser or create displays of Palestinian literature.

The group Fossil Free Books (FFB), which campaigns for “a genocide free, fossil free books industry” described the SoA’s statement as a “non-statement” of the kind that “does not challenge assaults on freedom of speech” but “confirms them”.

However, FFB recommended “staying engaged” with the SoA, suggesting that all authors, illustrators and translators join it, “not because it is currently the union we need”, but to “use its democratic structures to transform it into the union we deserve.”