‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ Review: Kaouther Ben Hania’s Harrowing Look at a Palestinian Genocide Flashpoint is the Most Indispensable Film of the Decade [A] Venice

In January of 2024, Hind Rajab was evacuating her home in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City, as ordered by Israeli forces, alongside six of her family members. By the time Layan, Hind’s aunt, managed to get in touch with dispatchers from the humanitarian group the Palestinian Red Crescent, they were the only survivors in the car, stuck within an impromptu siege and surrounded by IDF soldiers and tanks. Directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, best known for the Oscar-nominated feature Four Daughters (Les Filles d’Olfa), her latest film The Voice of Hind Rajab recounts the hours spent attempting to gain safe passage to rescue the terrified six-year-old who has quickly become the sole survivor, trapped in a car among the corpses of her kin.

In a hybrid style that is quickly becoming the director’s signature strength, narrative incarnations of the events that unfolded within the walls of the Red Crescent dispatch centre are blended with the authentic archive calls and the harrowing vocalizations of Hind herself. The film’s perspective is cultivated by four colleagues: a dispatch caller named Omar (Motaz Malhees), his supervisor Rana (Saja Kilani), the coordinator Mahdi (Amer Hlehel), and the welfare supervisor Nisreen (Clara Khoury). Mounted in their office is a pinboard, a tribute to the civilians who have been lost primarily in the case of senseless bombings, as well as posters bearing the faces of the first responders and rescue team members equally martyred. 

In Arabic culture, family members tend to give kids nicknames. Sometimes they are nonsensical ones in the vein of the ones my brother and I were given at an early age. Other times, they are a play on the sound of their given name. Over the phone, Hind introduces herself as Hanood, a subtlety that paints a picture of innocence, further building on her youthful, yet horrifyingly trembling voice. As she repeatedly begs for rescue, Omar and Rana grow restless at the countless setbacks that suppress their ability to act quickly. 

Hind is merely eight minutes away from a rescue team, but before an official dispatch can be greenlit, Mahdi carries the burden of calculating an elaborate plan that accounts for phone jamming, blocked roads full of bombing debris, and frankly, the IDF’s tendency to shoot anyone in their vision on site. He coordinates with other agencies to negotiate a route of safe passage while Rana spends hours comforting the little girl, keeping her mind preoccupied, and even attempting to soothe her by reading the very same verse of the Quran that my own father would read to me when I had nightmares at her age. 

The stakes rise as her chance of survival falls, but once all elements of coordination are in place and Hind is still responding, everything springs into action. A first glimpse of hope within the room is devastatingly interrupted by the sound of gunfire opening on both the child and those sent to rescue her, just a few of the 355 bullets fired at the family’s car that fateful day. Since Hind’s murder, at least 40,000 more children have been killed, all with stories equally as harrowing, all just as innocent. 

The purpose of this film isn’t to take advantage of a distressing story or to embellish it. It serves to transparently display the circumstances that Palestinians under occupation are forced to live within. They are forced to weigh up the cost of some innocent civilian lives over others, to continually document the events happening around them, and publish them online as a cry for humanity. Their medical crews and rescue teams are intentionally targeted and murdered, which is a serious war crime under the Geneva Convention. 

We see it all in this film as we have seen it play out for 77 years, and yet here we are, watching a genocide continue to be perpetrated without consequence to this very day. The final moments land on a pure documentarian note that is reminiscent of how Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest concludes at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, evoking similar feelings but with one major difference. This is not a musing on the past; this is a reflection of the present, where the bloodshed must end, where there is still time to intervene. 

There is a level of bravery that goes into crafting a project of this calibre, and there is no doubt that there will be mindless opposition, but Kaouther Ben Hania’s steady script and direction lay all the facts out on the table. The use of smartphone footage depicting the real-life colleagues responding to the situation on the day, the genuine phone calls, and the news footage of Hind’s lifeless body wrapped in cloth beside her family member. This film is simply undeniable and truly agonizing, but it is necessary and arguably the most indispensable film of the decade.

Grade: A

This review is from the 2025 Venice Film Festival where The Voice of Hind Rajab had its world premiere. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.