On the opening day of the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday, British actress Tilda Swinton criticized the “state-operated” crimes of “greed-addicted governments” while accepting a special prize.
After winning an honorary Golden Bear award on the first night of the festival, the veteran Oscar winner gave a heated 15-minute speech noting conflicts and scandals around the world, without naming any nation.
“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.”
In the middle of a national election campaign that has been dominated by a contentious migration discussion, Swinton, 64, spoke following the festival’s opening showing of German filmmaker Tom Tykwer’s drama “The Light” about a Syrian housekeeper.
The film, which was not screened as part of the main competition at the Berlinale, is about a middle-class family in Berlin who hire a new domestic worker and their lives are completely changed.
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