Juliette Binoche Honors Fatma Hassona at Cannes Opening Ceremony

At the opening ceremony of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, jury president Juliette Binoche delivered a powerful tribute to Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona, who was killed along with ten relatives in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on April 16. Hassona, only 25 years old, had learned the night before her death that the documentary she appeared in — *Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk* by Sepideh Farsi — was selected to premiere at Cannes. During the opening press conference earlier that day, Binoche had declined to comment on why she hadn’t signed an open letter condemning the film industry’s silence on Hassona’s death. However, her later speech was a heartfelt condemnation of violence and a call for artists to bear witness to global suffering. Binoche read a poem written by Hassona about her own death and emphasized the importance of humility, compassion, and the power of art in the face of conflict and oppression. She stated that artists worldwide resist injustice through their work and urged Cannes to be a place of transformation. The speech was met with both praise and criticism amid ongoing debates about political expression in artistic spaces.