On February 13th, Tilda Swinton was awarded an Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. Her brilliant Acceptance Speech should be watched repeatedly and shared widely.
The timeliness of her impassioned plea for humanity is evidenced by the fact it came the day before JD Vance’s tirade spreading hate and scapegoating immigrants at the Munich Security Conference . As Tilda said: “it has perhaps never been more pressing to consider to weigh with reverence and maturity what sovereignty means to humans.”
She cleverly avoided naming the latest mob of enemies to freedom and human rights. Any caring person should know who they are. Her speech is also rooted in a firm belief that “Cinema can inspire a civilized world”.
There is always more than one side to a story. As Tilda points out, movies are great at showing this. She doesn’t give examples but Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômon (1950) sets the benchmark here. It is also demonstrated in the more recent Japanese movie Monster (2023) directed by Hirokazu Koreeda where we see the same dramatic events from the perspective of worried mother, a teacher and a young boy.
Without patiently and compassionately considering all points of view there is a very real danger that the world’s agenda is set by blinkered extremists as if no other possibilities exist.
To imagine no country and a brotherhood of man may be idealistic but hope must lie in the dream that such a Lennon-esque vision will endure long after “greed addicted governments” and “planet wreckers” are confined to history. Tilda imagines “a borderless realm and with no policy of exclusion persecution or deportation” and why ever not?
Isn’t being human meant to help those in dire need rather than create more barriers to liberty?
“Death is no different whined about than withstood” wrote Philip Larkin in his desolate poem Aubade. In other words, whether we live paralysed by fear or accept it, the grim reaper will get us one day.
