The Voice of Hind Rajab

January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an urgent call: a six-year-old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, begging for rescue. While they try to keep her on the line, they do everything possible to send an ambulance to reach her. Her name was Hind Rajab. Drawing on the audio recording and building a fictional narrative around it, Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) has made a vital film for our time, awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

“I heard an audio recording of Hind Rajab begging for help. By then, her voice had already spread across the Internet. I immediately felt a mix of helplessness, and an overwhelming sadness. (…) I had to drop everything else. I had to make this film. I spoke at length with Hind’s mother, with the real people who were on the other end of that call, those who tried to help her. I listened, I cried, I wrote. Then I wove a story around their testimonies, using the real audio recording of Hind’s voice, and building a single-location film where the violence remains off-screen. That was a deliberate choice. (…)This story is not just about Gaza. It speaks to a universal grief. And I believe that fiction (especially when it draws from verified, painful, real events) is cinema’s most powerful tool. (…) Cinema can preserve a memory. Cinema can resist amnesia.”

Kaouther Ben Hania