Tilda Swinton spoke out as she received her lifetime achievement Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last night.
During the opening ceremony for the event's 75th edition, The Room Next Door star said: “The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch.”
She also celebrated the “great independent state of cinema”, which she said is “innately inclusive - immune to efforts of occupation, colonisation, takeover, ownership or the development of riviera property”.
She added that “state-perpetrated and internationally-enabled mass murder is currently actively terrorising more than one part of our world”.
Although she didn't reference specific conflicts, her comments come the week after US President Donald Trump suggested a plan to move Palestinians out of Gaza and turning it into a “riviera of the Middle East”, and amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
She added: “The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch. I’m here to name it without hesitation or doubt in my mind and to lend my unwavering solidarity to all those who recognise the unacceptable complacency of our greed-addicted governments who make nice with planet-wreckers and war criminals, wherever they come from.”
She also branded the festival "a borderless realm, with no policy of exclusion, persecution or deportation". You can watch the full speech above.
At a press conference this morning, the star also said she is taking a break from acting. She explained: “When I go home to Scotland on Monday, I am entering something that I have been looking forward to for 15 years, which is a period of my life when I do something different. I can’t quite say what it is, but I can say I’m not shooting a film for the rest of this year.”
