Angelina Jolie Says “I Feel A Part Of The Failure Of The System” After Pushing For Human Rights, But World Cinema Can Create Empathy – TIFF Tribute Awards

Anthony D'Alessandro and Natalie Sitek
·3 min read
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In receiving the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media tonight, Oscar and Tony winner Angelina Jolie exclaimed that “When I am asked how I feel about the state of the world today, I admit I feel sick.”

She added, “After pushing for basic human rights for all people, only to see the reality worsen for so many, I feel a part of the failure of the system.”

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However, Jolie always seeks to make a difference in showing the resilience of humanity. “A lot of Jolie’s films are about the long impact of war,” said TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey tonight at the world premiere of her sixth directorial Without Blood. Her blockbuster 2014 holiday movie, Unbroken followed Olympian Louis Zamperini turned WWII pilot, who spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he’s caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. In the 2017 Netflix documentary, First They Killed My Father, she followed Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung who recounts the horrors she suffered as a child under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge.

Without Blood, made outside the Hollywood system by Fremantle Italia and The Apartment, is based on the Alessandro Baricco novel which follows a grown woman who comes face to face with her father’s murderer, decades after he spared her own life. Though there’s no specified setting in the novel, Jolie leaned into Mexican period backdrop with Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir.

The TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media recognizes leadership in creating a union between social impact and cinema.

Below is Jolie’s speech in full from the Tribute awards tonight:

“The challenge of making film you hope can make an impact, is that you look back and wonder if it did.

As a director, I have been drawn to films about war.

I have wanted to understand how people can be driven to commit such acts of violence and cruelty against their fellow human beings.

I wanted to believe that stories that allow us to understand our shared humanity, might make these horrors less likely.

When I am asked how I feel about the state of the world today, I admit I feel sick.

After pushing for basic human rights for all people, only to see the reality worsen for so many, I feel a part of the failure of the system.

In a world full of broken commitments, it seems power and control and business mean more than protecting the already fragile fabric of human rights.

As artists, and audience, we have an opportunity now more than ever to watch and learn from world cinema, and to listen to and support others who are giving their perspective.

I’ve had the privilege of working and collaborating with artists from across the world.

I’ve have been humbled by their talent and craft. Like this brilliant woman beside me, and like the extraordinary filmmakers from Iran to Sudan whose work is being screened here this week.

To know each other makes it harder for misinformation to be spread or divisions created.

And to empathize with each other – as art as it best enables us to do – can help create the unity we need.

We have no certainty of success, but no option other than to be human, and keep creating.

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this creative community for all of these years.”

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