A film like The Voice of Hind Rajab transcends the idea of cinema as just entertainment. This is a document in dramatized form of a young life’s final moments amid the horror of war. Hind Rajab was only five years old when fate trapped her family in the inferno of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. In January 2024, with the cataclysmic conflict already raging for three months, Rajab and her family were shelled by the Israelis while trying to flee Gaza City. Trapped in a vehicle, Rajab phoned the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) for help. That recording of what would be her eventual killing by the Israel Defense Forces was heard around the world, turning Rajab into one of the most tragic symbols of the toll the war has taken on Gaza’s children. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania uses the wrenching audio of the real Hind Rajab to then build a searing, dramatic view into the team of PRCS staff scrambling to do something, anything, to try and save the little girl.
Hania keeps the drama confined to the PRCS call center, where Omar (Mataz Malhees), a volunteer, first answers the call from Rajab. The PRCS is mostly based out of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and so they struggle to coordinate viable medical services into Gaza, where the IDF is carrying out a virtual genocide. For Omar the situation becomes desperately urgent when the little girl on the phone describes how she is alone, sitting next to the corpses of her murdered family members. Omar’s colleague, Rana (Saja Kilani), also jumps on the line and tries to comfort the child while attempting to control her own devastated emotions. The best chance might be sending an ambulance to the car’s location to pull the girl out, even as, through the receiver, they can hear gunfire and tanks. Their supervisor, Mahdi (Amer Hlehel), surely wants to help but there is a frustrating structure that requires rescue services to follow specific routes, with specific permissions given through arcane intermediaries with the IDF. The team falls into utter helplessness as they try to comfort Rajab despite hope beginning to fade.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” is a dramatic embodiment of how much of the world has felt since the Gaza war began following the Hamas attack into Israel on October 7, 2023. We were all watching helplessly as the Benjamin Netanyahu regime began attempting the systemic ethnic cleansing of Gaza while the world’s major powers simply stood by. When Hind Rajab’s story emerged, it struck such a chord that antiwar protesters at Columbia University renamed the campus’ Hamilton Hall as “Hind’s Hall.” As cinema, this is a deeply moving experience about a moment in time and the horror of any conflict. Sensing the importance of this work, prominent figures like Jonathan Glazer, Joaquin Phoenix and Alfonso Cuarón attached their names as producers. The film then took the Grand Jury Prize at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival with good reason. Hania’s screenplay feels precise and richly layered, saying much about the conflict with the interactions of the characters. For the Red Crescent workers, the situation is not as easy as just sending an ambulance. The more bureaucratic Mahdi makes it clear that Israel has already killed several paramedics. The pressure on his shoulders is whether to risk more. Omar lambasts him at one point for being an example of why the occupation continues, dangerously coming close to calling his boss a collaborator.
In the U.S., the format employed here is typically used for digestible thrillers like Antoine Fuqua’s “The Guilty,” where one or more characters sit in a call center while action occurs off-screen, leaving our imaginations to do the rest. Hania isn’t out to build “suspense,” because she knows much of the audience will be aware of Rajab’s fate. She wants to frame the story forever as a kind of cinematic testimonial. By combining Rajab’s heartbreaking calls, where the child shows fear and intelligence, with the dramatized moments of the Red Crescent workers, the audience is pulled into the moment. Bold political speeches don’t need to be made. Everything is there in the events as they occurred. Rajab’s voice is allowed to preserve her memory, and it is wrenching how we get to know her along with Omar and Rana. When Rana tries to comfort the girl by telling her the other relatives in the car must be asleep, Rajab sharply clarifies that they are dead. Rana attempts to use maternal language, even reciting the Koran, to make Rajab not feel so alone out there in that hell, but Saja Kilani’s tortured eyes know time is running out. Cinematographer Juan Sarmiento G. shoots in a kinetic though not over-stylized way and the music by Amine Bouhafa never tries to overtake the images. Whenever a performance drops subtly for passionate expression, it makes perfect sense because who can stay “subtle” before such a horrifying moment?
The final moments of “The Voice of Hind Rajab” are absolutely gutting, even if you already know the story. Cinema can fool us into hoping that maybe for once, it will all work out. An Israeli tank fired 335 rounds into the car Rajab and her family were sitting in. The ambulance that eventually tried to reach her was attacked as well, and the paramedics were murdered. The more the rescuers tried to assure the girl that something was going to be done, the more overpowering the sound of tanks and ammunition felt in those unbearable calls. Like Chinonye Chukwu’s “Till,” this film is almost a moral challenge. If this story does not move you, what will? It is estimated that 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza. A ceasefire is in place now, but the strip is in ruins, and the killing and occupation continue. We must mourn these lost lives, as we should indeed mourn the recent Jewish victims of the senseless massacre in Australia. Meanwhile, in an ideal world, every politician responsible for what has happened should be strapped to a chair and made to watch this film.
The Voice of Hind Rajab releases Dec. 17 in New York and Los Angeles with a national rollout to follow.
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alci Rengifo.