"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."
Tri-Continental Film Festival, India