Yahya Mahayni's gratitude speech - 77th Venice International Film Festival
(To the writer and director Kaouther Ben Hania):
Roses are red. Violets are blue. Life gets people high. And so do you.
And I'll tell you how you do, at least in my personal view. Through your work, notably 'Peau de Colle', and this latest one, to name a few.
In these works, you excude freedom and convey it. You convey justice and portray it. You portray hypocrisy and condemn it. You condemn fear and play with it. You play with love and evince it. You take human contradictions, roughen them at the edges and flatten their frictions. You express your abstractions, at times with violence.
Underpinning all this is your relative introversion and your characteristic silence. That skin beneath which you have built your resilience in a wild word that is scattered with impediments. But you persist with determination. And you persist with love.
The latter, you ooze. You appropriate it, reshape it and reflect it. And this is precisely what you have done with this film.
(To Zina Mahayni)
Last but not least, given that I don't normally have this opportunity to stand in public and declare love, I wanted to declare my love to my sister: You have been, are, and always will be the greatest contemporary heroine in my eyes.