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Tilda Swinton on Attending Berlin Film Festival Despite Calls for Boycott Over Gaza: ‘I Was Given a Platform’ That Was ‘More Useful to Our Causes Than Me Not Turning Up’
Tilda Swinton spoke about her decision to attend Berlin despite calls for a boycott over Gaza, saying it was "more useful for our causes" to show up.
The Oscar winner received the festival’s honorary Golden Bear on Thursday night and made an impassioned speech in which she called out the “state-perpetrated and internationally-enabled mass murder is currently actively terrorizing more than one part of our world.” During a press conference on Friday, Swinton — who has been vocal in her support of Palestinians — was asked about the BDS Movement ‘s call for a boycott of the festival over its treatment of filmmakers who spoke out against the war in Gaza at last year’s closing ceremony. In a poetic speech, she lauded the festival as “a borderless realm with no policy of exclusion, persecution or deportation.” The “great independent state of cinema,” Swinton added, is “innately inclusive — immune to efforts of occupation, colonization, takeover, ownership or the development of riviera property.
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