DUBAI: Kaouther Ben Hania, the Tunisian filmmaker behind “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” refused to accept an award at a Berlin ceremony this week after an Israeli general was recognized at the same event.

The director was due to receive the Most Valuable Film award at the Cinema for Peace gala, held alongside the Berlinale, but chose to leave the prize behind.

On stage, Ben Hania said the moment carried a sense of responsibility rather than celebration. She used her remarks to demand justice and accountability for Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 2024, along with two paramedics who were shot while trying to reach her.

“Justice means accountability. Without accountability, there is no peace,” Ben Hania said.

“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,” she said.

“I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace. Not while the structures that enabled them remain untouched.”

Ben Hania said she would accept the honor “with joy” only when peace is treated as a legal and moral duty, grounded in accountability for genocide.