Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
Belgian actress and screenwriter Elisabeth Lucie Payten appeared at the Castars Festival in Belgium on Saturday evening wearing a dress made of a Palestinian shawl, and immediately linked this to a campaign in support of the victims of the war in Gaza. Just one day later, more than 60,000 euros had already been collected.
In statements to local media, including the newspaper Nieuwsblad, she said after she appeared on the red carpet of the Castars Festival on Saturday evening in an eye-catching dress. "I ordered 16 large Palestinian keffiyehs and then turned them into a designer dress," she said. "I love being at entertainment events, but I think it's important to make a point here too. What's happening in Gaza right now... I think it deserves more attention. That's where this look came from." "I'm also running a campaign on my social media to support this." She called on people to "donate whatever they can so that Oxfam can provide the necessary aid and basic necessities such as drinking water and hygiene products in Gaza." The tally as of Sunday evening, 24 hours later, stands at 60,234 euros.

Elisabeth Lucie Payten (born 30 November 1990 in Leuven) is a Flemish writer, actress and screenwriter.
Payten was born the youngest in a family of four and grew up in Rotselaar, near Leuven, where she later also studied language, literature and cultural studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. She lives in Antwerp with her husband and two children, a daughter and a son. She is the younger sister of Paul Peyton Gronda.

In 2018, Peyton began working as a screenwriter. In the same year, her comedy series was selected for VAF Concept Atelier. Since 2019, she has been co-writing the sketch show Loslopend Wild on één. She also began working as a weekly columnist for Knack magazine in 2019, continuing until 2021.

In the following years, Peyton has worked as a screenwriter for several production companies, co-writing the web series Match and the second season of the comedy series Nonkels.

At the end of 2022, her fantasy book And They Were Still Alive was published.

In 2023, she played the lead role in the film The Last Day. She also co-wrote the script for this film. In the same year, she also participated in three episodes of the program De Slimste Mens ter Wereld. She also achieved success on Instagram in 2023 with her character "Katrien van Politiek PR", where she pretends to be a PR person and makes fake phone calls to politicians about their policies or recent mistakes in 2024, and thanks in part to that character, she won the Kastaar Award for Online Personality of the Year 2023. In October 2024, the sequel to her fictional book, And They Were Still Alive, was published.