For Blanchett, now eight years into her work with UNHCR, the scale of global displacement remains staggering. “When I first started, the global number of displaced people was around 60 million,” she notes. “Now it’s doubled to over 120 million. It’s a staggering crisis… exacerbated by the impacts of climate change.” But beyond the figures, she remains moved by the stories of the people she meets, not as helpless victims, but as individuals brimming with dignity, capacity, and unrealized potential. “I’m always struck by their hopefulness and the incredible skills and talents they possess, doctors, lawyers, teachers, that often go to waste due to their displacement.”
Few countries embody this tension between burden and human responsibility more vividly than Egypt. Hosting millions of displaced individuals from neighboring conflicts, Egypt has assumed a role that many wealthier nations have resisted. Blanchett is candid in her admiration: “I applaud Egypt’s efforts to welcome and support refugees, both officially and through the compassion of the Egyptian people themselves. They are shouldering a tremendous responsibility, though of course they can’t do it alone.” The country’s ongoing commitment stands as an embodiment of what the festival’s motto aspires to, humanity not just as an idea, but as a policy, a gesture, a lived ethic.
For Blanchett, storytelling remains a powerful conduit for empathy, and her involvement in cinema and humanitarian work are deeply interlinked. “I don’t see a distinction between my work as an actor and my humanitarian efforts,” she says. “Both are about reflecting the human experience back to the world.” Initiatives like the Displacement Film Fund give refugees the space to tell their own stories, in their own voices, a cinematic restoration of agency that aligns seamlessly with the festival’s mission.
Yet she is clear-eyed about the road ahead. “This is a crisis of leadership and a failure of imagination,” Blanchett stresses. “We have the resources and the capacity to do so much more.” Her words echo the spirit of Gouna’s founding philosophy: that film is not a refuge from the world, but a lens through which we learn to see it more fully. Change begins not only in policy rooms, but in human perception, in the small personal act of refusing to look away.
“By coming together and amplifying the voices of the displaced, we can create the change we wish to see in the world,” she says. “The alternative to disengage and allow this crisis to worsen is unacceptable.”
In a year when the refugee crisis continues to shape the moral temperature of our era, Gouna does more than host films, it hosts a conversation about conscience. And here in Egypt, where “Cinema for Humanity” is not just a slogan but a lived reality, Cate Blanchett’s voice resonates as both reminder and invitation: storytelling remains one of humanity’s most powerful tools for justice, empathy, and belonging.