Bruno Wang joined Lee Daniels, Nadine Labaki and Marisa Berenson for a Liberatum-curated conversation about restoring context and humanity in an age of instant digital judgment
Cinema can offer something increasingly rare online: time to understand a person before reaching a conclusion. At Liberatum Art & Cinema in Venice, filmmakers Lee Daniels and Nadine Labaki discussed how film can challenge the speed of digital judgment by giving audiences the chance to encounter people through their stories, contradictions and lived experiences.
Held at Palazzina Grassi on 7 September as Liberatum celebrated its 25th anniversary, the programme brought together film, performance and public discussion around questions of human dignity. Pure Land Foundation founder Bruno Wang hosted Daniels, Labaki and actor Marisa Berenson for a panel exploring what happens when a complex human life is reduced to a photograph, comment or label.
Labaki spoke about the rapid judgments that can emerge online. “It takes a moment, it takes a situation, it takes a phrase, it takes a comma, it takes a word to completely judge somebody,” she said. “And then it becomes like a verdict.” Cinema offers a different kind of encounter, allowing audiences to remain with a character and discover their motives, histories and contradictions. “You start seeing their contradictions,” she said, and may eventually “fall in love with that person, even if you don’t agree with them.”
Daniels connected this idea to his own experience of feeling unseen. “Precious was just representative of me not being seen as a Black queer man in the ’80s when I wanted to be seen,” he said. “So many of us are invisible to people. We don’t fit the norm, then we are not significant.” He described his work as an effort “to give voice to people that don’t have voices and a face for people that aren’t seen.”
The speakers also considered the limits and possibilities of art. Labaki recalled making Capernaum with the hope that the film could contribute to changes in laws protecting children, while recognising the difficulty of translating cultural impact into institutional change. Daniels described a different kind of response after a screening of Precious, when an abuser told him, “Thank you. I will stop doing this to my daughter.” Berenson said such encounters mattered because “change starts on an individual level”.
A representative of the Pure Land Foundation said: “The Pure Land Foundation is increasingly interested in what happens when a person is misunderstood, judged or reduced to one public moment, and in what it takes to recover a fuller account of who they are. Cinema asks an audience to stay with a life long enough for the fuller person to emerge. Supporting Liberatum Art & Cinema allowed the Pure Land Foundation to place those questions at the heart of a public cultural programme.”
The wider event featured a poetry recital by Iranian singer and songwriter Sevdaliza alongside the 2026 Liberatum Pioneer Awards. Marina Abramović, Daniels and Labaki received awards recognising their contributions to performance art and cinema, with tributes from Rossy de Palma, Debi Mazar and Berenson.
Closing the discussion, Bruno Wang connected the conversation with the Buddhist principle of right speech. “Language is not always neutral,” he said. “The words that we use actually could shape perception, shape relationships and shape the reality.” He called for “a more humane culture of communication” capable of bringing accountability, compassion and complexity together while allowing space for transformation and growth.
