Streep came under fire when she said, “we’re all Africans, really” at the Berlin Film Festival
Meryl Streep set the record straight regarding her remark that “we’re all Africans” at the Berlin Film Festival two weeks ago, stating that she never intended to minimize differences, “contrary to distorted reporting.”
“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,” she wrote in an op-ed for the Huffington Post. “To be in Berlin is to see proof that walls don’t work.”
At the Berlin Film Festival on Feb. 11, Streep was asked if she, as the head of the festival’s jury, felt that she understood movies that came from North African and Arab countries.
“There is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture, and after all, we’re all from Africa originally,” Streep said. “We’re all Berliners, we’re all Africans, really.”
