On January 29th, 2024, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, made contact with the Palestine Red Crescent Society after the car she was travelling in came under fire in Gaza City. Hind had been fleeing with six family members – her uncle, aunt and four cousins – when the vehicle was struck. All six relatives were killed. Hind survived and was left alone and confused inside the car. “They’re dead,” she sobbed. “I’m so scared, please come.”
Over the next 3½ hours, Red Crescent call handlers remained in contact with her as she sheltered in the vehicle. During the call, Hind confirmed that the other occupants were dead and repeatedly cried for help. Aid workers attempted to keep her calm and responsive while co-ordinating efforts to secure permission and safe passage for an ambulance to reach her location.
The line went quiet later that evening. Twelve days later, Hind’s body and the bodies of her family members were recovered from the vehicle. Nearby was an ambulance that had been sent to rescue her, but it was hit before reaching the car. The remains of two paramedics were found inside the ambulance.
The Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania was deep into awards season with her Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters when she heard the heartbreaking audio recording of Hind’s last hours.
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“I was in an airport,” she recalls. “I was finishing the Oscar campaign and preparing another project I’ve been writing for several years. But at the same time, I was glued to the news, following what was happening in Gaza and asking myself: what does it mean to be a film-maker when the unthinkable is happening? I was losing faith in art. And then I heard her voice. Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. It triggered a very strong reaction. I wanted to do something with this emotion. I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
Ben Hania had previously utilised hybrid documentary in The Challat of Tunis (2014), a mock investigation into an urban legend concerning a masked motorcyclist slashing the buttocks of women who wear tight trousers, and Four Daughters (2023), a re-enactment of a familial crisis, in which acting functions as catharsis, allowing real participants to externalise trauma while maintaining control over their stories.
The Voice of Hind Rajab similarly blurs the line between vérité and drama with a detailed reconstruction fashioned around the unaltered audio of the five-year-old’s interactions with emergency services. Actors Saja Kilan, Motaz Malhees, and Amer Hlehel play Red Crescent dispatchers stationed in Ramallah – some 80km from Hind’s location – often quoting from their real-world counterparts verbatim.
“When I listened to the whole recording – which was very hard to listen to – I knew that this recording should echo,” says Ben Hania. “My job as a film-maker was to find the best form to carry her voice, but also to give the audience the right distance. Not too close. It couldn’t be a documentary because a documentary is about something that happened in the past. This is about the present.
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“There was no way to film the car, no way to stage her death or the death of her family, like a war movie. That was impossible for me. So I chose the perspective of those who listen to her voice: the Red Crescent dispatchers. They are not only listening; they do everything in their power to save her. They pay a heavy price. Two of their colleagues died. For me, they are the real heroes of this story. They are not in Gaza; they are in Ramallah. In a way, they are like us: listening from a distance, wanting to help, feeling helpless.”
Ben Hania, who studied at La Fémis – France’s leading film school – and at the Sorbonne, translated Hind’s original Arabic recording into French while writing the screenplay, allowing a degree of distance from the emotionally charged source material. She made contact with Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, early in the filmmaking process, securing her consent and blessing.
The project could not have proceeded without the co-operation of the dead girl’s family and real-life Red Crescent attendants Rana Hassan Faqih and Mahdi M Aljamal. These testimonies were crucial for a film that teases out the tragic and convoluted political realities faced by first responders. To secure a route for an ambulance, the Red Crescent must first contact the Red Cross, which, in turn, must contact the Israel Defense Forces.
“Everything was in the recording,” says Ben Hania. “The killing of Hind and all the conversations were there. But I needed to know what happened around that, in the offices and on the ground. I talked a lot to the real people behind the characters. I had conversations with her mother. I based my work on the forensic investigation and a Washington Post investigation. All these elements were very helpful in shaping the movie.”
The Voice of Hind Rajab, which is executive produced by Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonathan Glazer and Alfonso Cuarón, received an extraordinary 23-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival, where it went on to win the Grand Jury Prize (essentially second place). That reaction has been replicated at subsequent festival screenings in London, Cork and Chicago.
“The reaction in Venice went far beyond my expectations,” says Ben Hania. “It was so overwhelming, because it started in the dark. I could hear the sobbing in the room, and then when the lights came up, there was a moment of silence.”
Amplifying Hind Rajab’s voice, says Ben Hania, has been simultaneously painful and privileged.
“It was emotionally intense to make the film, but it is nothing compared to what the real people lived. We are fortunate. And because we are fortunate, we have the duty and the chance to tell this story. We should never forget that. Doing nothing is being complicit. This film is a way not to be complicit. We screened it at the United Nations, in [US] Congress, in the European Parliament. We are trying to expand its impact and create the possibility of change.”
The Voice of Hind Rajab is among the most-celebrated films to premiere over the last 12 months. But it is never a comfortable experience.
“Some people tell me, ‘The film is too hard, I can’t watch it,’” Ben Hania says. “I tell them: ‘Palestinians don’t have the privilege to say, ‘It’s too hard, I’ll walk away.’”
The Voice of Hind Rajab is in cinemas from January 16th
