She brought with her a different kind of force, one born not from fame, but from survival. At the Cannes LionHeart Seminar, held before she would receive the festival’s highest humanitarian honor, Sonita sat down with Cannes Lions’ Chief Content Officer Paul Kemp-Robertson. But the moment was more than a conversation, it was a reckoning.
“Dreams are the ultimate weapon,” she said, her voice steady in a room filled with the world’s top creatives, marketers, and storytellers. “This is something the Taliban hates, because they know we exist, and we will not stop.”
Her story is the kind that doesn’t just earn applause, it changes people. A former child bride escapee who used rap as a weapon against oppression, Sonita found her way out of forced marriage and into the global spotlight through the power of her voice. But at Cannes Lions, she wasn’t there to celebrate her own journey. She came to issue a challenge. “The most powerful weapon is our voice,” she told the crowd. “I want you to support other women… Invest in powerful stories to amplify the message. To invest the money, the power, the time where it really needs to be, in girls and families.”
Sonita reframed the conversation amongst industry professionals: What if the world’s most influential voices, the ones in advertising, media, and entertainment, redirected their focus toward amplifying the voices that go unheard? What if the next big campaign wasn’t for a product, but for a cause?
The Cannes LionHeart Award is given each year to someone who uses their platform to create meaningful social change. Throughout her appearance, Sonita spoke of young women still living under regimes that silence them, of girls who write poetry in secret and hum songs into pillows so they won’t be heard. And then, of the role everyone in the room could play in giving those voices volume. “Some of us have microphones. Some of us have cameras. Some of us have money. But all of us have a choice,” she said. “You decide what gets seen. What gets heard. What changes lives.”