The Voice of Hind Rajab

On January 29, 2024, the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza receives an emergency call. Inside a car, caught in the crossfire of the Israeli military, six-year-old Hind Rajab is trapped. Her family lies among the casualties; she is the only one able to maintain contact with the rescuers. As paramedics and volunteers attempt to coordinate a rescue, they face military restrictions, bureaucracy, and the impossibility of immediate action. Hind stays on the line, terrified and alone, every minute counting.

Oscar-nominated Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs these fatal moments using a unique hybrid approach: real phone calls are interwoven with staged scenes based on eyewitness reports and transcripts. The film tells not only Hind’s tragic story but also exposes the structural and moral complexities of humanitarian work in a conflict zone. The viewer is placed inside the overtaxed offices of the Red Crescent, where volunteers balance protocol, panic, and ethical choices under immense pressure. Actors Motaz Malhees (Omar), Saja Kilani (Rana), and Amer Hlehel (Mahdi) embody this reality, making the drama in a single location unfold with intense, second-by-second immediacy.

Ben Hania keeps the violent imagery offscreen. The power of the film lies in silence, in waiting, in listening to the voice of a child calling for help and not receiving it. It is an unflinching confrontation with failure - not just of individuals, but above all of a system that reacts too slowly when lives hang in the balance. Through audio, reenactment, and carefully orchestrated space, Ben Hania creates a film that is urgent, precise, and hypnotic. The Voice of Hind Rajab is a call for attention, responsibility, and humanity, forcing us to reckon with the systems and choices that protect-or fail-life. “I cannot accept a world in which a child cries for help and no one comes,” Ben Hania says. “That pain, that failure, is all of ours.” At its world premiere in Venice, the film received a standing ovation lasting more than 23 minutes - the longest in the festival’s history.