Kauser Ben Hania’s Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated feature film The Voice of Hind Rajab won the “Most Valuable Film” award at the Cinema for Peace Gala in Berlin on Monday night.
The annual event, attended by Hillary Clinton and Kevin Spacey and hosted by Bob Geldof, also remembered Noam Tibon, a former Israeli general and the subject of the Canadian documentary “The Road Between Us,” who rescued his family from Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
In her acceptance speech at the Adlon Hotel, Ben Hania, whose film chronicled the Red Crescent’s efforts to save Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the IDF during Israel’s 2024 invasion of Gaza, said she felt “more responsibility than gratitude” and blamed those she said helped create the “system” that made Rajab’s murder possible.
“What happened to Mr. Hind is not an exception. It is part of a genocide. And tonight in Berlin, there are those who have politically covered up that genocide by reframing the mass killing of civilians as self-defense. As a complex situation. By vilifying those who protest,” she said.
“But as you may know, peace is not a perfume sprinkled over violence, but something that makes power feel refined and comfortable. And the movie is not about image laundering.”
The director also spoke about the need to talk about justice as well as peace, and declared that he has no intention of taking home the Peace Film Award.
“Justice means accountability. Without accountability, there can be no peace. The Israeli military, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions, killed Hind Rajab, killed her family, and killed the two emergency workers who came to her rescue,” she said.
“I refuse to let their deaths become the backdrop for polite speeches about peace, not while the structures that made them possible remain untouched. So tonight, I will not be taking this award home. I will leave it here as a reminder. And when peace is pursued as a legal and moral obligation rooted in genocide responsibility, I will come back and embrace it gladly.”
Meanwhile, Mr Geldof attacked President Donald Trump for dismissing the issue of climate change.
“He’s an idiot and he should shut up,” he said.
