ladies first

"A story about an extraordinary woman and her journey, the jury decided to award Lina Makboul´s film, Leila Khaled Hijacker the award for Best Film because of its nuanced politics of nationhood and gender. This film about a Palestinian woman hijacker challenges our assumptions about those who resort to violent means in response to oppression and gives us access to the politics of one of the most troubled regions of the twentieth century. It also complicates the current discourse on Islam and terrorism by its deliberation on the meanings of terms such as "terrorist", interrogating and asking if one person's terrorist could be another's freedom fighter. Especially relevant in the context of today's highly polarized conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and closer home in Kashmir, this self-reflexive film echoes in its treatment, the complexity of its arguments, using evocative imagery both verité as well as reconstructed as well as archival footage in an extremely creative manner."




Leila Khaled currently serves on the Palestinian National Council and often appears at the World Social Form ( an anti-globalization annual meeting, that includes members such as the great Noam Chomsky). Although she is no longer in favor of hijacking as a legitimate method of protest. She still is very active in the fight fore Palestinian and womens sovereignty.

"It's not a peace process. It's a political process where the balance of forces is for the Israelis and not for us. They have all the cards to play with and the Palestinians have nothing to depend on, especially when the PLO is not united.