The Voice of Hind Rajab
Kaouther Ben Hania uses the real audio recording of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli military forces, to dramatise her failed rescue. The resulting hybrid film – nominated for an Oscar – is powerful and devastating
If film critics can be deemed to have any worth or function in this world, they would do well to urge each and every one of their readers to bear witness to The Voice of Hind Rajab. A hybrid work of documentary and dramatisation from now-thrice Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, the film depicts, in near-real time, the efforts of the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue response team to coordinate the extraction of a five-year-old girl trapped in a car under fire from Israeli military forces in Gaza.
Already a nerve-jangling, unrelenting depiction of committed volunteers scrambling to save an innocent soul, The Voice of Hind Rajab takes its name, and its power, from the real recording of a phone call between the Red Crescent and Hind, who was killed by the IDF on 29 January 2024 before rescue workers could reach her.
Ben Hania stages her cast of committed Palestinian actors, portraying real Red Crescent volunteers, in claustrophobic closeups as they respond to Hind’s real voice. Amid its thriller-like trappings, such carefully-calibrated blending of cinematic codes and the centralisation of real, raw documentary material holds the film firm to the devastating reality of its subject.
As it stands, The Voice of Hind Rajab is an epitaph, memorialising a real little girl murdered in a genocide that continues to this day. By seeing the film, audiences ensure Hind’s voice is preserved so she might contribute to the global struggle to end Palestinians’ suffering and subjugation in Gaza and all over the world.