It’s been a momentous week in Gaza, with Donald Trump securing that ceasefire deal, hostage and prisoner swaps, and Palestinians returning to the rubble that was their homes.
The world seems to be sensing genuine hope that the devastating loss of life will actually come to an end. So it might feel slightly odd to be plunged back into one of the conflict’s most heart-wrenching episodes.
However, the story of five-year-old Hind Rajab absolutely demands to be told. Discomfiting and emotionally devastating in the extreme, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s dramatised account of Hind’s death is utterly essential film-making.
On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent volunteers in Ramallah received an emergency phone call from 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Tel al-Hawa. “They are shooting at us. We’re in the car… the tank is right next to us,” she screams. Then the horrifying sound of heavy gunfire is heard and the line goes dead.
Like her previous film, Four Daughters, Ben Hania uses actors as the call centre workers to retell events. However, the voices of both Layan and Hind are their own, taken from the original phone recordings.
Call handler Omar (Motaz Malhees) assumes the worst, that whoever is in the vehicle has been killed, but then receives a message from a family member that a five-year-old girl is alive in the car. What follows is the harrowing last few hours in the short life of Hind Rajab.
Omar is fully gung-ho about immediately dispatching an ambulance to rescue Hind. “We only need eight minutes to save her,” he tells his superior Mahdi (Amer Hlehel).
Unfortunately, the car is in a restricted zone and a safe route needs coordinating for the ambulance and the security of its staff. Mahdi points Omar to a poster on the office wall of paramedics who lost their lives to drive home his caution.
As Mahdi explains the chain of command for securing the green light for a safe route, the bureaucratic nightmare becomes clear. Using a marker pen on one of the office’s glass walls, he details the trail of requests — from the Palestinian Ministry of Health to the Israeli authorities and Defense Forces and back again — creating a tortuously slow infinity loop of communication.
All the while, Red Crescent volunteers Rana (Saja Kilani) and Nisreen (Clara Khoury) are on the phone to Hind, desperately trying to reassure her and assess the situation on the ground.
They are “sleeping”, Hind initially tells Rana of the car’s other occupants. In fact, her uncle, aunt and three cousins are already dead. And then, “I’m dying”, although Rana guesses Hind is mistaking the blood of her family for her own.
While hearing Hind’s voice is as traumatic as can be imagined, Kilani’s tear-drenched, emotionally charged portrayal is equally moving. And Omar’s fraught battle with safety-conscious Mahdi unfolds almost like its own sub-thriller.
When they post an audio clip of Hind’s voice on social media, there’s a deeply pointed remark from Omar about the world’s seeming numbness towards the conflict after already seeing countless images of maimed and slaughtered children. “Do you really think the voice of a terrified little girl will spark their empathy?” he says.
Whether what occurred that day is a war crime or not is disputed by the Israeli authorities, although numerous reputable news organisations back up the events of this film. It is believed Israeli tanks fired 335 bullets at the car Hind was in that day.
Footage of the mangled vehicle and ambulance (both paramedics were also killed in the incident) taken 12 days later when Palestinians could access the site is shockingly sobering. As is Hind’s mother eventually retrieving the body of her daughter.
This is clearly not cinema as entertainment, but there’s a reason it received a 24-minute standing ovation at its world premiere in Venice last month. It’s a gigantically human tribute not just to Hind Rajab, but also to those who tried to save her.
And as gut-wrenching as the experience is (heartstrings aren’t pulled here, they are ripped from you), sometimes you feel you owe it to humanity to see a film such as The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The Voice of Hind Rajab was screening at the BFI London Film Festival. It will be on general release from January 16
