Rabat – Kaouther Ben Hania, the Tunisian filmmaker behind ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’, refused to accept a prestigious Berlin film award this week after an Israeli general was honored at the same ceremony.
The director was scheduled to receive the “Most Valuable Film” award at the Cinema for Peace gala, held alongside the Berlinale.
Instead, she left the prize behind, using the moment to speak about responsibility and justice rather than celebration.
On stage, Ben Hania called for accountability for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl brutally killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, along with two paramedics who were shot while trying to help her.
“Justice means accountability. Without accountability, there is no peace,” she said.
“The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab, killed her family, killed the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions,” the director added.
“I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace. Not while the structures that enabled them remain untouched.”
She concluded by saying she would accept the honor “with joy” only when peace is treated as a legal and moral duty, grounded in accountability for genocide.
