DaysofPal – The Tunisian director Kocher Ben Hania’s film The Voice of Hind Rajab won the “Most Valuable Film” award during the annual Cinema for Peace evening at the Berlin International Film Festival. However, Ben Hania refused to accept the award, leaving it on the stage in a clear act of protest.
Her decision followed the honoring of former Israeli General Noam Tibon during the same ceremony. Tibon, a central figure in the Canadian documentary The Road Between Us, was recognized for what was described as “saving his family” during the October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Observers noted that presenting both awards together appeared to attempt a kind of “balance” or “equivalence between perpetrator and victim.”
The Voice of Hind Rajab incorporates real emergency call recordings alongside dramatic reenactments of the final moments of Hind Rajab, a young girl deliberately killed by Israeli soldiers on January 29, 2024, while traveling with relatives to a so-called “safe place” in Gaza. The film is also nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best International Feature Film.
In her speech, delivered to an audience including former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey, Ben Hania said she felt “more responsibility than gratitude.” She emphasized that “the Voice of Hind Rajab is not only about one child; it’s about the system that made her killing possible. What happened to Hind is not an exception; it’s a part of a genocide. ”.
“In Berlin tonight, in Berlin, there are people who gave political cover to that genocide. By reframing the mass-civilian killing as “self-defense” and as “complex circumstances.” By denigrating those who protest, she said.
“But as you may know, peace is not a perfume sprayed over violence so power can feel refined and can feel comfortable. And cinema is not image-laundering. If we speak about peace, we must speak about justice. Justice means accountability. Without accountability, there is no peace. ”.
Ben Hania continued: “If we speak of peace, we must speak of justice. Justice means accountability. Without accountability, there is no peace. The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab, her family, and the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions.”
She concluded, “I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace. Not while the structures that enabled them remain untouched. So tonight, I will not take this award home. I leave it here as a reminder.
And when peace is pursued as a legal and moral obligation, rooted in accountability for genocide, then I will come back and accept it with joy.”
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