The veteran Oscar winner did not name any country but made a fiery 15-minute speech highlighting conflicts and scandals around the world after receiving an honorary Golden Bear award on the first night of the festival.
“State-operated and internationally enabled mass murder is currently actively terrorizing more than one part of our world,” she said.
“The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch. I’m free to name it, without hesitation or doubt in my mind,” Swinton added.
She spoke of the “development of riviera property” in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump’s call for Gaza’s Palestinian residents to be moved so that it can be rebuilt.
Swinton praised the festival and movie makers for taking up sensitive topics and offered her “unwavering solidarity to all those who recognize the unacceptable complicity of our greed-addicted governments who make nice with planet-wreckers and war criminals wherever they come from.”
Swinton, 64, spoke after the festival opened with a screening of German director Tom Tykwer’s film “The Light” — a drama about a Syrian housekeeper, in the midst of a national election campaign that has been dominated by a bitter migration debate.
The film, not screening as part of the Berlinale’s main competition, tells the story of a middle-class Berlin family whose lives are upended when they hire a new domestic worker.
© 2025 AFP
