On Friday afternoon, the San Sebastian Film Festival became more than just a celebration of cinema. It became a platform for humanity. Jennifer Lawrence, who was at the festival to premiere her new film Die My Love and receive the prestigious Donostia Award, spoke with raw honesty about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Her words, marked by equal parts courage and heartbreak, reminded audiences that even in moments of glamour and career triumph, empathy must remain center stage.
“I’m terrified and it’s mortifying,” Lawrence said softly, her voice carrying the weight of both fear and determination. “I’m terrified for my children, for all of our children.”
Speaking Truth in a Silenced Room
Journalists incessantly grilled the Oscar-winning actress on the war in Gaza at the presser. Moderators tried their best to bring the discussion around to her movie, but Lawrence wouldn’t allow the moment to go by unnoticed. Late in the presser, she addressed the issue matter-of-factly but with conviction, calling the situation “unacceptable” and “no less than a genocide.”
She continued an emotional appeal: “Everybody needs to remember that when you ignore what’s happening on one side of the world, it won’t be long until it’s on your side as well.”
These were not stage-written speaking lines. They were the voice of a mother, of a citizen, of an artist witnessing with utter despair as history unfolded.
A Message for the Next Generation
What interested me most was that Lawrence was fretting about youth, the 18-year-old first-time voters, the kids who will be coming of age in a world that accepts dishonesty and mean-spiritedness as endemic in politics. “On top of everything else, what makes me so sad is that this disrespect and the discourse in American politics right now is going to be normal to them,” she said. “Politicians lie, there is no empathy.”
The actress admitted that part of her fear of speaking out too much was that whatever she said could be spun or reduced to rhetoric. But she also reminded the public of an underlying truth: “I just want people to stay focused on who is responsible… and not let the actors and the artists who are trying to express freedom of art, freedom of speech take the heat for the individuals who are actually responsible.”
Art, Politics, and Humanity Intertwined
That evening, Die My Love, a scathing depiction of postpartum mental illness and delicate family relationships, was scheduled to open. Lawrence co-stars with Robert Pattinson in a part that won her a six-minute standing O at Cannes earlier this year, plus a $24 million foreign acquisition by Mubi. It’s a movie about motherhood, despair, and survival, good themes for a woman who had spoken from the heart hours earlier about the plight of children at war.
