Real Palestinian stories rise above the noise at the Berlinale
- BERLINALE 2026: Kaouther Ben Hania has refused to take home the Cinema for Peace Prize, while Hamdan Ballal’s family was attacked in the West Bank
While the Berlinale argued about whether or not cinema can be political (see the news), the reality of Palestinian life speaks for itself - first at the Adlon Hotel, where Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania refused to take home the Cinema for Peace Prize for The Voice of Hind Rajab [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kaouther Ben Hania
film profile]. Then in the occupied West Bank, where the family of Oscar-winning filmmaker Hamdan Ballal (No Other Land [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
film profile]) was attacked, again, by settlers.
The Cinema for Peace Gala, hosted by Bob Geldof, included guests such as Hillary Clinton and Kevin Spacey but also Becca Good, the widow of Renée Good, who via Zoom made her first public appearance since her wife’s killing in Minneapolis, accepting an award on her behalf. The evening’s most topical moment came when Kaouther Ben Hania, whose film tells the story of the desperate efforts by the Red Crescent to rescue five-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by IDF forces in 2024, was named the recipient of the “Most Valuable Film” Award. Ben Hania accepted the prize at the podium but did not take it home. “I feel responsibility more than gratitude… What happened to Hind is not an exception. It is part of a genocide. And tonight, in Berlin, there are people who gave political shelter to that genocide by reframing the mass civilian killing as self-defence. As complex circumstances. By denigrating those who protest. I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace. Not while the structures that enabled them remain untouched. So tonight, I will not take this award home. I leave it here as a reminder. And when peace is pursued as a legal and moral obligation, rooted in accountability for genocide, then I will come back and accept it with joy.”
While Ben Hania’s film depicted the killing of a Palestinian child, a dramatic situation related to No Other Land was playing out in real time in the occupied West Bank. On 15 February, Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary, reported that his family home in the occupied West Bank had been attacked by Israeli settlers, led by the same man who had assaulted him shortly after his Oscar win in March 2025. Ballal’s brother was hospitalised. Ballal wrote: “The year after I won the Oscar, the assaults increased significantly. The settlers come on a daily basis and destroy the fields, the trees, the crops. The situation has got worse… as it has across the West Bank.”
The European Film Academy issued a statement (read it here): “Devastated about the terrible violence against our colleague Hamdan Ballal and his family, the European Film Academy calls onto the Israeli authorities to immediately and unconditionally release the family members of the Palestinian director and to make sure they are safe.”
If there are still people who wonder whether art and cinema should be political, the answer thus comes both from a director who leaves her prize behind and refuses to speak politely about peace, and from the price paid by a filmmaker’s family over the reality he documented.
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