Drop Site Daily, February 18, 2026

Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania refused to accept the Cinema for Peace gala’s “most valuable film” prize during a ceremony in Berlin on Monday night for her feature film, “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

The film, which is nominated for an Oscar, is a dramatic retelling of Israel’s killing of six-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab and her family in January 2024. “What happened to Hind is not an exception. It’s a part of a genocide. And tonight, in Berlin, there are people who gave political cover to that genocide by reframing the mass civilian killing as self-defense, as complex circumstances.

By denigrating those who protest,” Ben Hania said. “But as you may know, peace is not a perfume sprayed over violence, so power can feel refined, and can feel comfortable. And cinema is not image-laundering.” She continued, “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…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.”

The annual gala also honored Noam Tibon, a former Israeli general featured in the Canadian documentary The Road Between Us, which chronicles Tibon’s rescue of his family following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.