The UN agency for refugees’ goodwill ambassador, Australian actor Cate Blanchett, pushed the film industry on Monday to embrace the “incredible” stories of these people.
“People who are displaced have a voice, they have a story,” said the Oscar-winning actor at a talk at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Their stories are so incredible and inspiring.”
As a UNHCR envoy since 2016, Blanchett has met refugees, and she reported that 114 million people have been displaced globally due to conflict and violence.
“I’m always bewildered as to why more films don’t speak directly or obliquely to this,” she said.
“The more we exclude these voices from our narratives, the more we’re othering them.”
“So I would love to say to people, when they are thinking about directors they might work with or stories that they might be interested in… just make a list of people who don’t look like you, who haven’t had experiences like you, and see what stories you might like to tell,” she said.
“I think what happened with the old studio system is they started to tell the same stories made by the same people, the same crews, and it died.”
Blanchett, who is also a producer, said there was still work ahead.
“You can see it in meetings with streamers when you go to pitch a story and they go ‘Oh we loved it, we connected, we were so moved, but it’s not part of our mandate,'” she said.
“And you go ‘Are you a dickhead? You’ve got no other story like this on your slate. Don’t you want a dynamic slate?'”
Blanchett is in Cannes for the world premiere of “Rumours,” an out-of-competition film in which the seven most affluent liberal democracies in the world get lost in the woods while attempting to make a statement.
